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THE  LIBRARY 

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VOLUME  3 
BALLAD-BIRRELL 


UNIVERSITY  EDITION 

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IN  THIRTY  VOLUMES 

VOLS.  1-26 

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VOL.  27 

THE   BOOK  OF   SONGS   AND  LYRICS 


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THE    reader's   dictionary   OF   AUTHORS 


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VOL.  30 

THE    student's   COURSE    IN   LITERATURE 
GENERAL   INDEX 


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CELEBRATED   AND   UNIQUE   MANUSCRIPT   AND 
BOOK  ILLUSTRATIONS 

A  senes  of  fac-similes,  showing  the  development  of  manuscript  and  book 
I  :  illustrating  during  a  thousand  years. 

LITERATURE 


.Cx.'l  . 


\\  ROMANCE   OF  KING  ARTHUM], 

rLi.,i;    ;;  .'OVERS'  ■ 

From  a  manuscript  of  the  ijth  century,  in  the  National  Library  at  Paris. 

Arthur  is  the  hero  of  the  Welsh  tales  of  the  Round  Table.  The  stories 
which  are  now  included  in  the  series  are  of  many  ages  and  of  many  lands, 
as  poets  and  writers  enlarged,  from  time  to  time,  upon  the  work  of  their 
predecessors.  The  foundations  of  the  tales  are  the  exploits  and  adven- 
tures of  a  real  Arthur  who  ruled  over  a  part  of  the  people  now  called  Welsh, 
some  time  in  the  sixth  century.  This  chieftain  opposed  the  enemies  who 
invaded  his  country,  but  being  finally  defeated,  weut  into  exile  in  northern 
France,  with  whose  people  he  also  became  a  hero.  In  the  Welsh  legends, 
Arthur  is  to  return  to  his  own  at  some  time,  and  it  is  said  in  some  parts  of 
the  country  so  strong  is  this  belief,  that  a  person  who  expresses  a  doubt 
upon  the  subject  is  in  danger  of  personal  injury, 
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UNIVERSITY  EDITION 

THE  WARNER  LIBRARY 

IN  THIRTY  VOLUMES 
VOLUME  3 


THE 

WORLD'S  BEST 

LITERATURE 


EDITORS 

JOHN  W.  CUNLIFFE 

ASHLEY  H.  THORNDIKE 

PROFESSORS  OF  ENGLISH  IN  COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY 

FOUNDED  BY 
CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 


NEW  YORK 

PRINTED  AT  THE  KNICKERBOCKER 

PRESS  FOR  THE  WARNER  LIBRARY  COMPANY 

TORONTO:  GLASGOW,  BROOK  &  COMPANY 

1917 


><:4.^8 


Copyright,  1S9G,  by  R.  S.  Pcale  and  J.  A.  Ilill 

Copyright,  1902,  by  J.  A.  Hill 

Copyright,  1013,  by  Warner  Library  Company 

Copyright,  1017,  by  United  States  Publishers  Association,  Inc 

All  Rights  Reserved 


6)  o  (  3 
U   G  1 


ADVISORY  COUNCIL 


EDWIN  A.  ALDERMAN 

President  of  the  University  of  Virginia 

RICHARD  BURTON 

Professor  of  English  in  the  University  of  Minnesota 

MAURICE  FRANCIS  EGAN 

American  Ambassador   to   Denmark;   Formerly   Professor  of  Literature 
in  the  Catholic  University  of  America 

BRANDER  MATTHEWS 

Professor  of  Dramatic  Literature  in  Columbia  University 

WILLIAM  LYON  PHELPS 

Professor  of  English  in  Yale  University 

PAUL  SHOREY 

Professor  of  Greek  in  the  University  of  Chicago 

WILLIAM  M.  SLOANE 

Seth  Low  Professor  of  History  in  Columbia  University 

CRAWFORD  H.  TOY 

Professor  Emeritus  of  Hebrew  in  Harvard  University 

WILLIAM  P.  TRENT 

Professor  of  English  Literature  in  Columbia  University 

BENJAMIN  IDE  WHEELER 

President  of  the  University  of  California 

GEORGE  M.  WRONG 

Professor  of  History  in  the  University  of  Toronto 


Vll 


CONTENTS 


THE  BALLAD 

PAGE 

CRITICAL  ESSAY,  by  F.  B.  Gummere            .......      1305 

Robin  Hood  and  Guy  of  Gisborne 

.       I312 

The  Hunting  of  the  Cheviot 

.       I319 

Johnie  Cock     ..... 

.       1326 

Sir  Patrick  Spens      .... 

•       1329 

The  Bonny  Earl  of  Murray 

■       1330 

\]Mary  Hamilton         .... 

I33I 

Bonnie  George  Campbell 

1333 

Bessie  Bell  and  Mary  Gray 

1334 

The  Three  Ravens    .          .          ,          . 

1334 

Lord  Randal    ..... 

1335 

Edward             ..... 

1336 

The  Twa  Brothers    .... 

1337 

Babylon;  or  The  Bonnie  Banks  0'  Fordie 

1339 

Childe  Maurice          ..... 

1340 

The  Wife  of  Usher's  Well 

1344 

Sweet  William's  Ghost       .... 

1345 

HONORE  DE  BALZAC,  1 799-1 850 

CRITICAL  ESSAY,  by  WiUiam  P.  Trent 
The  Meeting  in  the  Convent 
An  Episode  Under  the  Terror 
A  Passion  in  the  Desert     . 
The  Napoleon  of  the  People 


1348 
1367 
1384 
1400 

1413 


GEORGE  BANCROFT,  1800-1891 

CRITICAL  ESSAY,  by  Austin  Scott       ........  1433 

The  Beginnings  of  Virginia  ........  1439 

Men  and  Government  in  Early  Massachusetts     .....  1441 

King  Philip's  War     ..........  1443 

The  New  Netherland 1445 

Franklin  ...........  1448 

Wolfe  on  the  Plains  of  Abraham  .......  1450 

Washington  ..........  1453 


Vlll                                                                 CONTENTS 

JOHN  AND  MICHAEL  BANIM,  1 798-1 846,  and  i 796-1 874 

PAGE 

CRITICAL   ESSAY 

1458 

The  Publican's  Dream       ........ 

1459 

Ailleen     ........... 

1470 

Soggarth  Aroon         ......... 

I47I 

The  Irish  Maiden's  Song  ........ 

1473 

THEODORE  DE  BANVILLE,  1823-1891 

CRITICAL   ESSAY         ...... 

Le  Caf^  ...... 

Ballade  on  the  Mysterious  Hosts  of  the  Forest 
Aux  Enfants  Perdus  .... 

Ballade  des  Pendus  ..... 


1474 
1475 
1478 

1479 
1480 


ANNA  L.^TITIA  BARBAULD,  1 743-1 825 

CRITICAL   ESSAY         ...... 

Against  Inconsistency  in  Our  Expectations 
A  Dialogue  of  the  Dead    .... 

Life  ..... 

Praise  to  God  .... 


1481 
1484 
1490 
1494 

1495 


ALEXANDER  BARCLAY,  1475-1552 


CRITICAL    ESSAY 

The  Courtier's  Life 


1496 
1500 


RICHARD  HARRIS  BARHAM,  1 788-1845 

CRITICAL    ESSAY  ........ 

As  I  Laye  A-Thynkynge   ...... 

The  Lay  of  St.  Cuthbcrt,  or  The  Dc\-irs  Dinner- Party 
A  Lay  of  St.  Nicholas        ...... 


1503 
1509 

1522 


SABINE  BARING-GOULD,  1834- 

CRITICAL    ESSAY  ...........       15^9 

St.  Patrick's  Purgatory -1531 

The  Cornish  Wreckers 1537 


JANE  BARLOW,  1 860-1 91 7 

CRITICAL   ESSAY         .  .  .  . 

The  Widow  Joyce's  Cloak 
Walled  Out       .  .  .  . 


1543 
1544 
1554 


CONTENTS 


IX 


JOEL  BARLOW,   1 754-1812 


CRITICAL    ESSAY 

A  Feast 


PAGE 

1557 
1559 


WILLL\M  BARNES,   1 800-1 886 

CRITICAL   ESSAY 

Blackmwore  Alaidens 

May 

JMillvcn  Time    . 

Jessie  Lee 

The  Turnstile  . 

To  the  Water-Crowfoot 

Zummer  an'  Winter 


1563 

1565 
1566 

1567 
1568 

1569 
1570 
1570 


MAURICE  BARRES,  1862- 

CRITICAL  ESSAY,  by  Pierre  de  Bacourt 
My  Rule  of  Life 
Les  Amities  Frangaises 
Colette  Baudoche 


1570  a 
1570  c 
1570  f 
1570  h 


JAMES  MATTHEW  BARRIE,   1860- 

CRITICAL   ESSAY         .... 

The  Courting  of  T'nowhead's  Bell 

Jess  Left  Alone 

After  the  Sermon 

The  Mutual  Diseovery 

Lost  Illusions 

Sins  of  Circumstance 


1571 
1574 
1591 
1595 
1600 
1603 
1606 


FREDERIC  BASTIAT,  1 801-1850 

CRITICAL   ESSAY  ........ 

Petition  of  the  Manufacturers  of  Candles,  Wax-Lights,  etc. 
Stulta  and  Puera       ....... 

Inapplicable  Terms  ....... 


1607 
1610 
1614 
1616 


CHARLES  BAUDELAIRE,  1821-1867 

CRITICAL  ESSAY,  by  Grace  King 
Meditation 

The  Death  of  the  Poor      . 
Music 

The  Broken  Bell 
The  Enemy 
Beauty    .... 


1617 
1624 
1624 
1625 
1625 
1626 
1626 


CONTENTS 


Death      .  .  .  . 

The  Painter  of  Modem  Life 

Modernness 

Every  One  his  own  Chimera 

Humanity 

Windows 

Drink      .... 

From  a  Journal 


PAGE 
1627 
1627 
1629 
1630 
1631 
I63I 
1632 
1632 


LORD  BEACONSFIELD,  1 804-1 881 

CRiTiovL  ESSAY,  by  Isa  Carrington  Cabell 
A  Day  at  Ems 

The  Festa  in  the  "  Alhambra  " 
Charles  Anncslcy 
The  Fussy  Hostess   . 
Public  Speaking 
Female  Beauty 
Lothair  in  Palestine 


BEAUMARCHAIS,  1 732-1 799 

CRITICAL  ESSAY,  by  Brander  Matthews 
Outwitting  a  Guardian 


Outwitting  a  Husband 


1633 
1638 
1642 
1650 
1651 
1651 
1652 
1653 


1657 
1660 
1666 


FRANCIS  BEAUMONT  and  JOHN  FLETCHER,    1584-1616, 
AND  1 579-1 625 

CRITICAL  ESSAY,  by  Ashley  H.  Thorndike  .......  1674 

The  Faithful  Shepherdess            ........  1680 

Song        ............  1683 

Song        ............  1683 

Aspatia's  Song           ..........  1683 

Leandro's  Song         ..........  1684 

True  Beauty    ...........  1684 

Ode  to  Melancholy  ..........  1685 

To  my  Dear  Friend,  Master  Benjamin  Jonson,  upon  His  '  Fox  '     .          .  1685 

On  the  Tombs  in  Westminster   ........  1686 

Arethusa's  Declaration       .........  1687 

The  Story  of  Bellario          .........  1690 

Confession  of  Evadne  to  Amintor        .  .  .  .  .  .1691 

The  Death  of  the  Boy  Hcngo     ........  1694 

From  '  The  Two  Noble  Kinsmen  ' 1698 


WILLIAM  BECKFORD,  1 759-1 844 

CRITICAL  ESSAY 

The  Incantation  and  the  Sacrifice 

Vathek  and  Nouronihar  in  the  Halls  of  Eljlis 


1699 
1702 
1705 


CONTENTS 


XI 


HENRY  WARD  BEECHER,  1 8 13-1887 

CRITICAL  ESSAY,  by  Lyiiian  Abbott 
Book-Stores  and  Books 
Selected  Paragraphs. 
Sermon :  Poverty  and  the  Gospel 
A  New  England  Sunday    . 


PAGE 

I713 
1720 

1723 
1725 
1737 


LUDWIG  VAN  BEETHOVEN,  1 770-1827 

CRITICAL  ESSAY,  by  E.  Irenseus  Stevenson 
From  Letter  to  Dr.  Wcgeler 
To  Dr.  Wegeler         .... 
From  the  Letters  to  Bettina  Brentano 
To  Countess  Giulietta  Guicciardi 
To  ]My  Brothers  Carl  and  Johann  Beethoven 
To  the  Royal  and  Imperial  High  Court  of  Appeal 
To  Baroness  von  Drossdick 
To  Zmeskall     .... 
To  Zmeskall     .... 
To  his  Brother  Johann 
To  Stephan  V.  Breiming   . 


1749 
1752 
1752 
1754 
1755 
1757 
1759 
1760 
1761 
1761 
1761 
1762 


CARL  MICHAEL  BELLMAN,  1740- 1795 

CRITICAL  ESSAY',  by  Olga  FUneh 
ToUUa  .... 

Cradle-Song  for  Aly  Son  Carl 

Amaryllis 

Art  and  Politics 

Drink  Out  thy  Glass. 


1763 

1767 
1769 
1769 
1771 
1772 


ARNOLD  BENNETT,  1867- 

CRiTic^VL  ESSAY,  by  Allan  Nevins 
The  Professional  Reviewer 
A  Children's  Party  . 
The  Five  Towns 


1772  a 
177-^  f 
1772  h 
1772  1 


JEREMY  BENTHAM,  1 748-1 832 

CRITICAL   ESSAY         ..... 

Of  the  Principle  of  Utility 

Reminiscences  of  Childhood 

Letter  to  George  Wilson    . 

Fragment  of  a  Letter  to  Lord  Lansdowne 


1773 
1776 

1778 
1781 
1782 


xu 


CONTENTS 


JEAN-PIERRE  DE  BERANGER,  1 780-1857 

CRITICAL  ESSAY,  by  Alc6e  Forticr 
From  '  The  Gipsies  ' 
The  Gad-Fly    . 
Draw  it  JNIild  . 
The  King  of  Yvctot 
Fortune  .... 
The  People's  Reminiscences 
The  Old  Tramp 
Fifty  Years 
The  Garret 
My  Tomb 
Prom  his  Preface  to  his  Collected  Poems 


PAGE 

1783 

1788 
1788 

1789 
1790 
1792 
1793 

1795 
1796 

1797 

1798 

1799 


HENRI  LOUIS  BERGSON,  1859- 

CRiTiCAL  ESSAY,  by  W.  P.  Montague 

Creative  Evolution  .... 


1800  a 
1800  i 


GEORGE  BERKELEY,  1685-1753 

CRITICAL   ESSAY         ........ 

On  the  Prospect  of  Planting  Arts  and  Learning  in  America 
,  Essay  on  Tar-Water  ...... 


1801 
1805 
1805 


HECTOR  BERLIOZ,  1803-1869 

CRITICAL   ESSAY         ...... 

The  Italian  Race  as  Musicians  and  Auditors 
The  Famous  "  Snuff-Box  Treachery  " 
On  Gluck         ..... 

On  Bach.  ..... 

Music  as  an  Aristocratic  Art 

The  Beginning  of  a  "  Grand  Passion  " 

On  Theatrical  Ivlanagers  in  Relation  to  Art 


1809 
1811 
1813 
1815 
1816 
1816 
1817 
1818 


SAINT  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX,  1091-1153 

CRITICAL   ESSAY         ........ 

Saint  Bernard's  Hymn       ...... 

Monastic  Luxury      ....... 

From  His  Sermon  on  the  Death  of  Gerard  . 


1819 
1822 
1823 
1826 


BERNARD  OF  CLUNY,  Twelfth  Century 

CRITICAL  ESSAY,  by  William  C.  Prime 

Brief  Life  is  Here  Our  Portion    .... 


1828 
1830 


CONTENTS 


XIU 


JULIANA  BERNERS,  Fifteenth  Century 


CRITICiVL   ESSAY         ........ 

Here  Begynnyth  the  Treatyse  of  Fysshynge  wyth  an  Angle 


PAGE 

1834 

IS35 


WALTER  BESANT,  1838-1901 

CRITICAL  ESSAY I837 

Old-Time  London 1840 

The  Synagogue         ..........  1845 


BESTL^RIES  AND  LAPIDARIES 

CRITICAL  ESSAY,  by  L.  Oscar  Kuhns . 
The  Lion 
The  Pelican 
The  Eagle 
The  Phosnix 
The  Ant 
The  Siren 
The  Whale 
The  Crocodile 
The  Turtle-Dove 
The  Mandragora 
Sapphire . 
Coral 


1852 
1854 
1854 
1855 
1856 
1856 
1857 
1857 
1858 

1859 
1859 
i860 

i860 


MARIE-HENRI  BEYLE  (STENDHAL),  1783-1842 

CRiTic.\L  ESSAY,  by. Frederic  Taber  Cooper  .... 

Princess  Sanseverina's  Inter\'icw  ..... 

Clelia  Aids  Fabrice  to  Escape    ...... 


1861 

1869 
1878 


WILLEM  BILDERDIJK,  1756-1831 

CRITICAL    ESSAY 

Ode  to  Beauty 

From  the  '  Ode  to  Napoleon  ' 

Slighted  Love  . 

The  Village  Schoolmaster 


1884 
1887 
1888 
1890 
1892 


BION,  275  B.  C. 

CRITICAL   ESSAY  ...........  I893 

Threnody 1895 

Hesper 1897 


XIV 


CONTENTS 


AUUUbiilNi^    UiKKiijLl^,    1050- 

PAGE 

CRITICAL   ESSAY 

.       1898 

Dr.  Johnson     .          . 

.       1900 

The  Office  of  Literature     ....... 

.       1908 

Truth-Hunting 

.       I912 

Benvcnuto  CclHni     ........ 

.       I915 

On  the  Alleged  Obscurity  of  Mr.  Browning's  Poetry     . 

«       1920 

XV 


•   ILLUSTRATIONS 

ROMANCE  OF  KING  ARTHUR 

Illuminated  Manuscript  ......  Frontispiece 

GEORGE  BANCROFT 

Portrait  from  wood  ......       Facing  page       1433 

HENRY  WARD  BEECHER 

Photogravure  .......  <<        ««  i-ji^ 

JEAN-PIERRE  DE  BERANGER 

Portrait  from  wood         .  .         .         .  .  ;  ««        «<  j^g^ 


1305 
THE   BALLAD 

(Popular   or   Communal) 
BY   F.    B.    GUMMERE 

|he  popular  ballad,  as  it  is  understood  for  the  purpose  of  these 
selections,  is  a  narrative  in  lyric  form,  with  no  traces  of 
individual  authorship,  and  is  preserved  mainly  by  oral  tra- 
dition. In  its  earliest  stages  it  was  meant  to  be  sung  by  a  crowd, 
and  got  its  name  from  the  dance  to  which  it  furnished  the  sole 
musical  accompaniment.  In  these  primitive  communities  the  ballad 
was  doubtless  chanted  by  the  entire  folk,  in  festivals  mainly  of  a 
religious  character.  Explorers  still  meet  something  of  the  sort  in 
savage  tribes:  and  children's  games  preserve  among  us  some  relics 
of  this  protoplasmic  form  of  verse-making,  in  which  the  single  poet 
or  artist  was  practically  unknown,  and  spontaneous,  improvised  verses 
arose  out  of  the  occasion  itself;  in  which  the  whole  community  took 
part;  and  in  which  the  beat  of  foot  —  along  with  the  gesture  which 
expressed  narrative  elements  of  the  song  —  was  inseparable  from  the 
words  and  the  melody.  This  native  growth  of  song,  in  which  the 
chorus  or  refrain,  the  dance  of  a  festal  multitude,  and  the  spon- 
taneous nature  of  the  words,  were  vital  conditions,  gradually  faded 
away  before  the  advance  of  cultivated  verse  and  the  vigor  of  pro- 
duction in  what  one  may  call  poetry  of  the  schools.  Very  early  in 
the  history  of  the  ballad,  a  demand  for  more  art  must  have  called 
out  or  at  least  emphasized  the  artist,  the  poet,  who  chanted  new 
verses  while  the  throng  kept  up  the  refrain  or  burden.  Moreover,  as 
interest  was  concentrated  upon  the  words  or  story,  people  began  to 
feel  that  both  dance  and  melody  were  separable  if  not  alien  features; 
and  thus  they  demanded  the  composed  and  recited  ballad,  to  the 
harm  and  ultimate  ruin  of  that  spontaneous  song  for  the  festal,  dan- 
cing crowd.  Still,  even  when  artistry  had  found  a  footing  in  ballad 
verse,  it  long  remained  mere  agent  and  mouthpiece  for  the  folk;  the 
communal  character  of  the  ballad  was  maintained  in  form  and 
matter.  Events  of  interest  were  sung  in  almost  contemporary  and 
entirely  improvised  verse;  and  the  resulting  ballads,  carried  over  the 
borders  of  their  community  and  passed  down  from  generation  to  gen- 
eration, served  as  newspaper  to  their  own  times  and  as  chronicle  to 
posterity.  It  is  the  kind  of  song  to  which  Tacitus  bears  witness  as 
the  sole  form  of  history  among  the  early  Germans;  and  it  is  evident 
that  such  a  stock  of  ballads  must  have  furnished  considerable  raw 
material  to  the   epic.      Ballads,  in   whatever   original   shape,  went  to 


1306 


THE   BALLAD 


the  making  of  the  English  ^Beowulf,*  of  the  German  <  Nibelungenlied.* 
Moreover,  a  study  of  dramatic  poetry  leads  one  back  to  similar  com- 
munal origins.  What  is  loosely  called  a  "chorus,*'  —  originally,  as  the 
name  implies,  a  dance  —  out  of  which  older  forms  of  the  draina  were 
developed,  could  be  traced  back  to  identity  with  primitive  forms  of 
the  ballad.  The  purely  lyrical  ballad,  even,  the  chanso7i  of  the  peo- 
ple, so  rare  in  English  but  so  abundant  among  other  races,  is  evi- 
dently a  growth  from  the  same  root. 

If,  now,  we  assume  for  this  root  the  name  of  communal  poem, 
and  if  we  bear  in  mind  the  dominant  importance  of  the  individual, 
the  artist,  in  advancing  stages  of  poetry,  it  is  easy  to  understand 
why  for  civilized  and  lettered  communities  the  ballad  has  ceased  to 
have  any  vitality  whatever.  Under  modern  conditions  the  making  of 
ballads  is  a  closed  account.  For  our  times  poetry  means  something 
written  by  a  poet,  and  not  something  sung  more  or  less  spontaneously 
by  a  dancing  throng.  Indeed,  paper  and  ink,  the  agents  of  preserva- 
tion in  the  case  of  ordinary  verse,  are  for  ballads  the  agents  of 
destruction.  The  broadside  press  of  three  centuries  ago,  while  it 
rescued  here  and  there  a  genuine  ballad,  poured  out  a  mass  of  vulgar 
imitations  which  not  only  displaced  and  destroyed  the  ballad  of  oral 
tradition,  but  brought  contempt  upon  good  and  bad  alike.  Poetry  of 
the  people,  to  which  our  ballad  belongs,  is  a  thing  of  the  past.  Even 
rude  and  distant  communities,  like  those  of  Afghanistan,  cannot  give 
us  the  primitive  conditions.  The  communal  ballad  is  rescued,  when 
rescued  at  all,  by  the  fragile  chances  of  a  written  copy  or  of  oral 
tradition ;  and  we  are  obliged  to  study  it  under  terms  of  artistic 
poetry,  —  that  is,  we  are  forced  to  take  through  the  eye  and  the  judg- 
ment what  was  meant  for  the  ear  and  immediate  sensation.  Poetry 
for  the  people,  however,  "popular  poetry'*  in  the  modern  phrase,  is 
a  very  different  affair.  Street  songs,  vulgar  rhymes,  or  even  improv- 
isations of  the  concert-halls,  tawdry  and  sentimental  stuff, —these 
things  are  sundered  by  the  world's  width  from  poetry  of  the  people, 
from  the  folk  in  verse,  whether  it  echo  in  a  great  epos  which  chants 
the  clash  of  empires  or  linger  in  a  ballad  of  the  countryside  sung 
under  the  village  linden.  For  this  ballad  is  a  part  of  the  poetry 
which  comes  from  the  people  as  a  whole,  from  a  homogeneous  folk, 
large  or  small;  while  the  song  of  street  or  concert-hall  is  deliberately 
composed  for  a  class,  a  section,  of  the  community.  It  would  there- 
fore be  better  to  use  some  other  term  than  "  popular  **  when  we  wish 
to  specify  the  ballad  of  tradition,  and  so  avoid  all  taint  of  vulgarity 
and  the  trivial.  Nor  must  we  go  to  the  other  extreme.  Those  high- 
born people  who  figure  in  traditional  ballads  —  Childe  Waters,  Lady 
Maisry,  and  the  rest  —  do  not  require  us  to  assume  composition  in 
aristocratic  circles;  for  the  lower  classes  of  the  people  in  ballad  days 


THE   BALLAD 


1307 


had  no  separate  literature,  and  a  ballad  of  the  folk  belonged  to  the 
community  as  a  whole.  The  same  habit  of  thought,  the  same  stand- 
ard of  action,  ruled  alike  the  noble  and  his  meanest  retainer.  Oral 
transmission,  the  test  of  the  ballad,  is  of  coursd  nowhere  possible 
save  in  such  an  unlettered  community.  Since  all  critics  are  at  one 
in  regard  to  this  homogeneous  character  of  the  folk  with  whom  and" 
out  of  whom  these  songs  had  their  birth,  one  is  justified  in  removing 
all  doubt  from  the  phrase  by  speaking  not  of  the  popular  ballad  but 
of  the  communal  ballad,  the  ballad  of  a  community. 

With  regard  to  the  making  of  a  ballad,  one  must  repeat  a  caution, 
hinted  already,  and  made  doubly  important  by  a  vicious  tendency  in 
the  study  of  all  phases  of  culture.  It  is  a  vital  mistake  to  explain 
primitive  conditions  by  exact  analogy  with  conditions  of  modern  sav- 
agery and  barbarism.  Certain  conclusions,  always  guarded  and  cau- 
tious to  a  degree,  may  indeed  be  drawn;  but  it  is  folly  to  insist  that 
what  now  goes  on  among  shunted  races,  belated  detachments  in  the 
great  march  of  culture,  must  have  gone  on  among  the  dominant  and 
mounting  peoples  who  had  reached  the  same  external  conditions  of 
life.  The  homogeneous  and  unlettered  state  of  the  ballad-makers 
is  not  to  be  put  on  a  level  with  the  ignorance  of  barbarism,  nor 
explained  by  the  analogy  of  songs  among  modern  savage  tribes. 
Fortunately  we  have  better  material.  The  making  of  a  ballad  by  a 
community  can  be  illustrated  from  a  case  recorded  by  Pastor  Lyngbye 
in  his  invaluable  account  of  life  on  the  Faroe  Islands  a  century  ago. 
Not  only  had  the  islanders  used  from  most  ancient  times  their  tra- 
ditional and  narrative  songs  as  music  for  the  dance,  but  they  had 
also  maintained  the  old  fashion  of  making  a  ballad.  In  the  winter, 
says  Lyngbye,  dancing  is  their  chief  amusement  and  is  an  affair  of 
the  entire  community.  At  such  a  dance,  one  or  more  persons  begin 
to  sing;  then  all  who  are  present  join  in  the  ballad,  or  at  least  in 
the  refrain.  As  they  dance,  they  show  by  their  gestures  and  expres- 
sion that  they  follow  with  eagerness  the  course  of  the  story  which 
they  are  singing.  More  than  this,  the  ballad  is  often  a  spontaneous 
product  of  the  occasion.  A  fisherman,  who  has  had  some  recent  mis- 
hap with  his  boat,  is  pushed  by  stalwart  comrades  into  the  middle 
of  the  throng,  while  the  dancers  sing  verses  about  him  and  his  lack 
of  skill, — verses  improvised  on  the  spot  and  with  a  catching  and 
clamorous  refrain.  If  these  verses  win  favor,  says  Lyngbye,  they  are 
repeated  from  year  to  year,  with  slight  additions  or  corrections,  and 
become  a  permanent  ballad.  Bearing  in  mind  the  extraordinary 
readiness  to  improvise  shown  even  in  these  days  by  peasants  in 
every  part  of  Europe,  we  thus  gain  some  definite  notion  about  the 
spontaneous  and  communal  elements  which  went  to  the  making  of 
the  best  type  of  primitive  verse;    for  these   Faroe  islanders  were   no 


i3o8 


THE   BALLAD 


savages,  but  simply  a  homogeneous  and  isolated  folk  which  still  held 
to  the  old  ways  of  communal  song. 

Critics  of  the  ballad,  moreover,  agree  that  it  has  little  or  no  sub- 
jective traits,  —  an  easy  inference  from  the  conditions  just  described. 
There  is  no  individuality  lurking  behind  the  words  of  the  ballad,  and 
'above  all,  no  evidence  of  that  individuality  in  the  form  of  sentiment. 
Sentiment  and  individuality  are  the  very  essence  of  modern  poetry, 
and  the  direct  result  of  individualism  in  verse.  Given  a  poet,  senti- 
ment—  and  it  may  be  noble  and  precious  enough  —  is  sure  to  follow. 
But  the  ballad,  an  epic  in  little,  forces  one's  attention  to  the  object, 
the  scene,  the  story,  and  away  from  the  maker. 

«The  king  sits  in  Dumferling  town,>> 

begins  one  of  the  noblest  of  all  ballads;  while  one  of  the  greatest  of 
modern  poems  opens  with  something  personal  and  pathetic,  keynote 
to  all  that  follows :  — 

«My  heart  aches,  and  a  drowsy  numbness  pains 
My  sense     .     .     .  >> 

Even  when  a  great  poet  essays  the  ballad,  either  he  puts  sentiment 
into  it,  or  else  he  keeps  sentiment  out  of  it  by  a  tour  de  force.  Ad- 
mirable and  noble  as  one  must  call  the  conclusion  of  an  artistic 
ballad  such  as  Tennyson's  *  Revenge,^  it  is  altogether  different  from 
the  conclusion  of  such  a  communal  ballad  as  *  Sir  Patrick  Spens.*  That 
subtle  quality  of  the  ballad  which  lies  in  solution  with  the  story  and 
which  —  as  in  *  Child  Maurice*  or  <  Babylon  >  or  <  Edward*  —  compels 
in  us  sensations  akin  to  those  called  out  by  the  sentiment  of  the 
poet,  is  a  wholly  impersonal  if  strangely  effective  quality,  far  removed 
from  the  corresponding  elements  of  the  poem  of  art.  At  first  sight, 
one  might  say  that  Browning's  dramatic  lyrics  had  this  impersonal 
quality.  But  compare  the  close  of  <  Give  a  Rouse,*  chorus  and  all, 
with  the  close  of  <  Child  Maurice,'  that  swift  and  relentless  stroke  of 
pure  tragedy  which  called  out  the  enthusiasm  of  so  great  a  critic  as 
Gray. 

The  narrative  of  the  communal  ballad  is  full  of  leaps  and  omis- 
sions; the  style  is  simple  to  a  fault;  the  diction  is  spontaneous  and 
free.  Assonance  frequently  takes  the  place  of  rhyme,  and  a  word 
often  rhymes  with  itself.  There  is  a  lack  of  poetic  adornment  in  the 
style  quite  as  conspicuous  as  the  lack  of  reflection  and  moralizing  in 
the  matter.  Metaphor  and  simile  are  rare  and  when  found  are  for 
the  most  part  standing  phrases  common  to  all  the  ballads;  there  is 
never  poetry  for  poetry's  sake.  Iteration  is  the  chief  mark  of  ballad 
style;  and  the  favorite  form  of  this  effective  figure  is  what  one  may 
call  incremental  repetition.  The  question  is  repeated  with  the  an- 
swer;  each   increment   in   a   series   of   related   facts   has   a   stanza  for 


THE   BALLAD 


1309 


itself,  identical,  save  for  the  new  fact,  with  the  other  stanzas.  <  Baby- 
lon' furnishes  good  instances  of  this  progressive  iteration.  Moreover, 
the  ballad  differs  from  earlier  English  epics  in  that  it  invariably  has 
stanzas  and  rhyme;  of  the  two  forms  of  stanza,  the  two-line  stanza 
with  a  refrain  is  probably  older  than  the  stanza  with  four  or  six 
lines. 

This  necessary  quality  of  the  stanza  points  to  the  origin  of  the 
ballad  in  song;  but  longer  ballads,  such  as  those  that  make  up  the 
<Gest  of  Robin  Hood,'  an  epic  in  little,  were  not  sung  as  lyrics  or  to 
aid  the  dance,  but  were  either  chanted  in  a  monotonous  fashion  or 
else  recited  outright.  Chappell,  in  his  admirable  work  on  old  Eng- 
lish music  (< Music  of  the  Olden  Time,'  ii.  790),  names  a  third  class  of 
«  characteristic  airs  of  England,"  —  the  «  historical  and  very  long  bal- 
lads, .  .  .  invariably  of  simple  construction,  usually  plaintive. 
.  .  .  They  were  rarely  if  ever  used  for  dancing."  Most  of  the 
longer  ballads,  however,  were  doubtless  given  by  one  person  in  a 
sort  of  recitative ;  this  is  the  case  with  modern  ballads  of  Russia  and 
Servia,  where  the  bystanders  now  and  then  join  in  a  chorus.  Pre- 
cisely in  the  same  way  ballads  were  divorced  from  the  dance,  origin- 
ally their  vital  condition;  but  in  the  refrain,  which  is  attached  to  so 
many  ballads,  one  finds  an  element  which  has  survived  from  those 
earliest  days  of  communal  song. 

Of  oldest  communal  poetry  no  actual  ballad  has  come  down  to 
us.  Hints  and  even  fragments,  however,  are  pointed  out  in  ancient 
records,  mainly  as  the  material  of  chronicle  or  legend.  In  the  Bible 
(Numbers  xxi.  17),  where  "Israel  sang  this  song,"  we  are  not  going 
too  far  when  we  regard  the  fragment  as  part  of  a  communal  ballad. 
** Spring  up,  O  well:  sing  ye  unto  it:  the  princes  digged  the  well,  the 
nobles  of  the  people  digged  it,  by  the  direction  of  the  lawgiver,  with 
their  staves."  Deborah's  song  has  something  of  the  communal  note; 
and  when  Miriam  dances  and  sings  with  her  maidens,  one  is  reminded 
of  the  many  ballads  made  by  dancing  and  singing  bands  of  women 
in  mediaeval  Europe,  —  for  instance,  the  song  made  in  the  seventh 
century  to  the  honor  of  St.  Faro,  and  <<sung  by  the  women  as  they 
danced  and  clapped  their  hands."  The  question  of  ancient  Greek 
ballads,  and  their  relation  to  the  epic,  is  not  to  be  discussed  here; 
nor  can  we  make  more  than  an  allusion  to  the  theory  of  Niebuhr 
that  the  early  part  of  Livy  is  founded  on  old  Roman  ballads.  A 
popular  discussion  of  this  matter  may  be  found  in  Macaulay's  preface 
to  his  own  <Lays  of  Ancient  Rome.'  The  ballads  of  modern  Europe 
are  a  survival  of  older  communal  poetry,  more  or  less  influenced  by 
artistic  and  individual  conditions  of  authorship,  but  wholly  imper- 
sonal, and  with  an  appeal  to  our  interest  which  seems  to  come  from 
a  throng  and  not  from  the  solitary  poet.      Attention  was  early  called 


J, JO  .  THE    BALLAD 

to  the  ballads  of  Spain;  printed  at  first  as  broadsides,  they  were 
gathered  into  a  volume  as  early  as  1550.  On  the  other  hand,  ballads 
were  neglected  in  France  until  very  recent  times;  for  specimens  of 
the  French  ballad,  and  for  an  account  of  it,  the  reader  should  consult 
Professor  Crane's  <  Chansons  Popvilaires  de  France,*  New  York,  1891. 
It  is  with  ballads  of  the  Germanic  race,  however,  that  we  are  now 
concerned.  Denmark,  Norway,  Sweden,  Iceland,  the  Faroe  Islands; 
Scotland  and  England;  the  Netherlands  and  Germany:  all  of  these 
countries  offer  us  admirable  specimens  of  the  ballad.  Particularly, 
the  great  collections  of  Grundtvig  (^  Danmarks  Gamle  Folkeviser  >)  for 
Denmark,  and  of  Child  {*•  The  English  and  Scottish  Popular  Ballads  *) 
for  our  own  tongue,  show  how  common  descent  or  borrowing  con- 
nects the  individual  ballads  of  these  groups.  "Almost  every  Nor- 
wegian, Swedish,  or  Icelandic  ballad,**  says  Grundtvig,  "is  found  in 
a  Danish  version  of  Scandinavian  ballads;  moreover,  a  larger  number 
can  be  found  in  English  and  Scottish  versions  than  in  German  or 
Dutch  versions.**  Again,  we  find  certain  national  preferences  in  the 
character  of  the  ballads  which  have  come  down  to  us.  Scandinavia 
kept  the  old  heroic  lays  (Kaempeviser) ;  Germany  wove  them  into  her 
epic,  as  witness  the  Nibelungen  Lay;  but  England  and  Scotland  have 
none  of  them  in  any  shape.  So,  too,  the  mythic  ballad,  scantily  rep- 
resented in  English,  and  practically  unknown  in  Germany,  abounds 
in  Scandinavian  collections.  The  Faroe  Islands  and  Norway,  as 
Grundtvig  tells  us,  show  the  best  record  for  ballads  preserved  by  oral 
tradition;  while  noble  ladies  of  Denmark,  three  or  four  centuries  ago, 
did  high  service  to  ballad  literature  by  making  collections  in  manu- 
script of  the  songs  current  then  in  the  castle  as  in  the  cottage. 

For  England,  one  is  compelled  to  begin  the  list  of  known  ballads 
with  the  thirteenth  century.  <  The  Battle  of  Maldon,*  composed  in 
the  last  decade  of  the  tenth  century,  though  spirited  enough  and  full 
of  communal  vigor,  has  no  stanzaic  structure,  follows  in  metre  and 
style  the  rules  of  the  Old  English  epic,  and  is  only  a  ballad  by 
courtesy;  about  the  ballads  used  a  century  or  two  later  by  historians 
of  England,  we  can  do  nothing  but  guess;  and  there  is  no  firm  ground 
under  the  critic's  foot  until  he  comes  to  the  Robin  Hood  ballads, 
which  Professor  Child  assigns  to  the  thirteenth  century.  <The  Battle 
of  Otterburn*  (1388)  opens  a  series  of  ballads  based  on  actual  events 
and  stretching  into  the  eighteenth  century.  Barring  the  Robin  Hood 
cycle, — an  epic  constructed  from  this  attractive  material  lies  before 
us  in  the  famous  <  Gest  of  Robin  Hood,*  printed  as  early  as  1489, — 
the  chief  sources  of  the  collector  are  the  Percy  Manuscript,  "written 
just  before  1650,** — on  which,  not  without  omissions  and  additions, 
the  bishop  based  his  <Reliques,*  first  published  in  1765,  —  and  the 
oral  traditions  of  Scotland,  which  Professor  Child  refers  to  "the  last 


THE   BALLAD 


1311 


one  hundred  and  thirty  years. »  Information  about  the  individual 
ballads,  their  sources,  history,  literary  connections,  and  above  all, 
their  varying  texts,  must  be  sought  in  the  noble  work  of  Professor 
F.  J.  Child.  For  present  purposes,  a  word  or  two  of  general  infor- 
mation must  suffice.  As  to  origins,  there  is  a  wide  range.  The 
church  furnished  its  legend,  as  in  <  St.  Stephen  ^ ;  romance  contributed 
the  story  of  <  Thomas  Rymer  > ;  and  the  light,  even  cynical  fabliau  is 
responsible  for  <The  Boy  and  the  Mantle.'  Ballads  which  occur  in 
many  tongues  either  may  have  a  common  origin  or  else  may  owe 
their  manifold  versions,  as  in  the  case  of  popular  tales,  to  a  love  of 
borrowing;  and  here,  of  course,  we  get  the  hint  of  wider  issues.  For 
the  most  part,  however,  a  ballad  tells  some  moving  story,  preferably 
of  fighting  and  of  love.  Tragedy  is  the  dominant  note;  and  English 
ballads  of  the  best  type  deal  with  those  elements  of  domestic  disaster 
so  familiar  in  the  great  dramas  of  literature,  in  the  story  of  Orestes, 
or  of  Hamlet,  or  of  the  Cid.  Such  are  <  Edward, >  ^Lord  Randal,^ 
<The  Two  Brothers,*  <  The  Two  Sisters, >  <  Child  Maurice, >  <  Bewick 
and  Graham,*  <  Clerk  Colven,*  <  Little  Musgrave  and  Lady  Barnard,* 
^Glasgerion,*  and  many  others.  Another  group  of  ballads,  represented 
by  the  ^  Baron  of  Brackley  *  and  *  Captain  Car,  *  give  a  faithful  picture 
of  the  feuds  and  ceaseless  warfare  in  Scotland  and  on  the  border. 
A  few  fine  ballads  —  <  Sweet  William's  Ghost,*  <  The  Wife  of  Usher's 
Well  *  —  touch  upon  the  .supernatural.  Of  the  romantic  ballads, 
*•  Childe  Waters  *  shows  us  the  higher,  and  *■  Young  Beichan  *  the 
lower,  but  still  sound  and  communal  type.  Incipient  dramatic  ten- 
dencies mark  *•  Edward  *  and  *•  Lord  Randal  * ;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  a  lyric  note  almost  carries  <  Bonnie  George  Campbell*  out  of 
balladry.  Finally,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  in  the  <  Nut-Brown  Maid,  * 
which  many  would  unhesitatingly  refer  to  this  class  of  poetry,  we 
have  no  ballad  at  all,  but  a  dramatic  lyric,  probably  written  by  a 
woman,  and  with  a  special  plea  in  the  background. 


U^tyuiyiAjc^/^ , 


I3I2 


THE   BALLAD 


ROBIN    HOOD   AND   GUY   OF   GISBORNEi 


■  W 


HEN   shawes'''  beene   sheene,'  and   shradds*  full 
fayre, 
And  leeves  both  large  and  longe. 
It  is  merry,   walking  in  the  fayre  forrest, 
To  heare  the  small  birds'  songe. 


2.  The  woodweele*  sang,  and  wold  not  cease, 

Amongst  the  leaves  a  lyne;® 
And  it  is  by  two  wight'  yeomen, 
By  deare  God,  that  I  meane. 

•  •••••• 

3.  "Me  thought  they^  did  me  beate  and  binde, 

And  tooke  my  bow  me  fro; 
If  I  bee  Robin  alive  in  this  lande, 

I'll  be  wrocken'  on  both  them  two.** 

4.  "Sweavens^"  are  swift,  master,**  quoth  John, 

**  As  the  wind  that  blowes  ore  a  hill ; 
For  if  it  be  never  soe  lowde  this  night, 
To-morrow  it  may  be  still.** 

5.  <*  Buske  ye,  bowne  ye,"  my  merry  men  all, 

For  John  shall  go  with  me ; 
For  I'll  goe  seeke  yond  wight  yeomen 
In  greenwood  where  they  bee.** 

'  This  ballad  is  a  good  specimen  of  the  Robin  Hood  Cycle,  and  is  remark- 
able for  its  many  proverbial  and  alliterative  phrases.  A  few  lines  have  been 
lost  between  stanzas  2  and  3.  Gisborne  is  a  « market-town  in  the  West  Rid- 
ing of  the  County  of  York,  on  the  borders  of  Lancashire.  >>  For  the  probable 
tune  of  the  ballad,  see  Chappell's  <  Popular  Music  of  the  Olden  Time,>  ii.  397. 

2  Woods,  groves.  —  This  touch  of  description  at  the  outset  is  common  in 
our  old  ballads,  as  well  as  in  the  mediaeval  German  popular  lyric,  and  may 
perhaps  spring  from  the  old  « summer-lays  >*  and  chorus  of  pagan  times. 

'  Beautiful ;   German,  sckon. 

*  Coppices  or  openings  in  a  wood. 

^  In  some  glossaries  the  woodpecker,  but  here  of  course  a  song-bird,  —  per- 
haps, as  Chappell  suggests,  the  woodlark. 
^  A,  on;   Ijne,  lime  or  linden. 
'  Sturdy,  brave. 

*  Robin  now  tells  of  a  dream  in  which  «they**  (=the  two  «  wight  yeomen, » 
who  are  Guy  and,  as  Professor  Child  suggests,  the  Sheriff  of  Nottingham) 
maltreat  him;  and  he  thus  foresees  trouble  «from  two  quarters. » 

9  Revenged.  '"  Dreams. 

"Tautological  phrase,  —  « prepare  and  make  ready.» 


THE   BALLAD 

6.  They  cast  on  their  gowne  of  greene, 

A  shooting  gone  are  they, 
Until  they  came  to  the  merry  greenwood, 

Where  they  had  gladdest  bee; 
There  were  they  ware  of  a  wight  yeoman, 

His  body  leaned  to  a  tree. 

7.  A  sword  and  a  dagger  he  wore  by  his  side, 

Had  beene  many  a  man's  bane,' 
And  he  was  cladd  in  his  capull-hyde,'' 
Topp,  and  tayle,  and  mayne. 

8.  "Stand  you  still,  master, '*  quoth  Litle  John, 

"  Under  this  trusty  tree, 
And  I  will  goe  to  yond  wight  yeoman, 
To  know  his  meaning  trulye.*' 

9.  <*  A,  John,  by  me  thou  setts  noe  store. 

And  that's  a  farley*  thi'nge; 
How  oflft  send  I  my  men  before. 
And  tarry  myselfe  behinde  ? 

10.  "  It  is  noe  cunning  a  knave  to  ken. 

And  a  man  but  heare  him  speake; 
And  it  were  not  for  bursting  of  my  bowe, 
John,  I  wold  thy  head  breake.*^ 

11.  But  often  words  they  breeden  bale. 

That  parted  Robin  and  John; 
John  is  gone  to  Barnesdale, 

The  gates*  he  knowes  eche  one. 

12.  And  when  hee  came  to  Barnesdale, 

Great  heavinesse  there  hee  hadd; 
He  found  two  of  his  fellowes 

Were  slaine  both  in  a  slade,^ 

13.  And  Scarlett  a  foote  flyinge  was. 

Over  stockes  and  stone. 
For  the  sheriffe  with  seven  score   rtien 
Fast  after  him  is  gone. 

^Murder,  destruction. 
'  Horse's  hide. 
'  Strange. 

*  Paths. 

*  Green  valley  between  woods. 
"''111—83 


1313 


13^4 


THE   BALLAD 


14.  <<Yet  one  shoote  I'll  shoote,^*  sayes  Litle  John, 

**  With  Crist  his  might  and  mayne ; 
I  '11  make  yond  fellow  that  flyes  soe  fast 
To  be  both  glad  and  faine.'* 

15.  John  bent  up  a  good  veiwe  bow,  * 

And  fetteled'''  him  to  shoote; 
The  bow  was  made  of  a  tender  boughe, 
And  fell  downe  to  his  foote. 

16.  <<  Woe  worths  thee,  wicked  wood,**  sayd  Litle  John, 

"  That  ere  thou  grew  on  a  tree ! 
For  this  day  thou  art  my  bale. 

My  boote*  when  thou  shold  bee!** 

17.  This  shoote  it  was  but  loosely e  shott, 

The  arrowe  flew  in  vaine, 
And  it  mett  one  of  the  sheriflfe's  men; 
Good  William  a  Trent  was  slaine, 

18.  It  had  beene  better  for  William  a  Trent 

To  hange  upon  a  gallowe 
Then  for  to  lye  in  the  greenwoode, 
There  slaine  with  an  arrowe. 

19.  And  it  is  sayed,  when  men  be  mett. 

Six  can  doe  more  than  three : 
And  they  have  tane  Litle  John, 
And  bound  him  fast  to  a  tree. 

20.  <*Thou  shalt  be  drawen  by  dale  and  downe,** 

quoth  the  sheriffe,  ^ 
<*  And  hanged  hye  on  a  hill :  ** 
<*But  thou  may  fayle,**  quoth  Litle  John 
^*If  it  be  Christ's  owne  will.'* 

21.  Let  us  leave  talking  of  Litle  John, 

For  hee  is  bound  fast  to  a  tree, 

'Perhaps  the  yew-bow. 

"Made  ready.         ' 

'«Woe  be  to  thee.**  Worth  is  the  old  subjunctive  present  of  an  exact 
English  equivalent  to  the  modern  German  iverden. 

*Note  these  alliterative   phrases.     Boote,  remedy. 

*As  Percy  noted,  this  « quoth  the  sheriffe,>*  was  probably  added  by  some 
explainer.  The  reader,  however,  must  remember  the  license  of  slurring  or 
contracting  the  syllables  of  a  word,  as  well  as  the  opposite  freedom  of  expan- 
sion.   Thus  in  the  second  line  of  stanza  7,  man's  is  to  be  pronounced  man-es. 


THE   BALLAD  131^ 

And  talke  of  Guy  and  Robin  Hood 

In  the  green  woode  where  they  bee. 

22.  How  these  two  yeomen  together  they  mett, 

Under  the  leaves  of  lyne, 
To  see  what  marchandise  they  made 
Even  at  that  same  time. 

23.  <*Good  morrow,  good  fellow,'*  quoth  Sir  Guy; 

<<Good  morrow,  good  fellow,  >>  quoth  hee; 
"Methinkes  by  this  bow  thou  beares  in  thy  hand, 
A  good  archer  thou  seems  to  bee.** 

24.  "I  am  wilfull  of  my  way,**  '  quoth  Sir  Guy, 

"  And  of  my  morning  tyde :  ** 
"I'll  lead  thee  through  the  wood,**  quoth  Robin, 
^*  Good  fellow,  I'll  be  thy  guide.  ** 

25.  "I  seeke  an  outlaw,**  quoth  Sir  Guy, 

"Men  call  him  Robin  Hood; 
I  had  rather  meet  with  him  upon  a  day 
Then  forty  pound  of  golde.** 

26.  "If  you  tow  mett,  it  wold  be  scene  whether  were  better 

Afore  yee  did  part  awayc; 
Let  us  some  other  pastime  find. 
Good  fellow,  I  thee  pray. 

27.  "  Let  us  some  other  masteryes  make, 

And  we  will  walke  in  the  woods  even; 
Wee  may  chance  meet  with  Robin  Hood 
At  some  unsett  steven.**" 

28.  They  cutt  them  downe  the  summer  shroggs' 

Which  grew  both  under  a  bryar, 
And  sett  them  three  score  rood  in  twinn,* 
To  shoote  the  prickes"  full  neare. 

29.  "  Leade  on,  good  fellow,**  sayd  Sir  Guye, 

"Leade  on,  I  doe  bidd  thee:** 
"Nay,  by  my  faith,**  quoth  Robin  Hood, 
"The  leader  thou  shalt  bee.** 

*  I  have  lost  my  way. 
»At  some  unappointed  time, —  by  chance. 
'Stunted  shrubs.  ■* Apart.  ' 

^'>- Prickes   seem   to  have  been  the   long-range  targets,  butts  the  near.»— . 
Fumivall.  ''       ^'^-vS" 


i^j6  the  ballad 

30.  The  first  good  shoot  that  Robin  ledd, 

Did  not  shoote  an  inch  the  pricke  free, 
Guy  was  an  archer  good  enoughe, 
But  he  could  neere  shoote  soe. 

31.  The  second  shoote  Sir  Guy  shott, 

He  shott  within  the  garlande,' 
But  Robin  Hoode  shott  it  better  than  hee, 
For  he  clove  the  good  pricke-wande. 

32.  "God's  blessing  on  thy  heart!**  sayes  Guye, 

"  Goode  fellow,  thy  shooting  is  goode ; 
For  an  thy  hart  be  as  good  as  thy  hands, 
Thou  were  better  than  Robin  Hood. 

33.  <*  Tell  me  thy  name,  good  fellow,'*  quoth  Guye, 

"Under  the  leaves  of  lyne:** 
"Nay,  by  my  faith,"  quoth  good  Robin, 
"Till  thou  have  told  me  thine. » 

34.  "I  dwell  by  dale  and  downe,**  quoth  Guye, 

"And  I  have  done  many  a  curst  turne; 
And  he  that  calles  me  by  my  right  name, 
Calles  me  Guye  of  good  Gysborne." 

35.  "My  dwelling  is  in  the  wood,**  sayes  Robin; 

"  By  thee  I  set  right  nought ; 
My  name  is  Robin  Hood  of  Barnesdale, 
A  fellow  thou  hast  long  sought.** 

36.  He  that  had  neither  beene  a  kithe  nor  kin 

Might  have  scene  a  full  fayre  sight. 
.  To  see  how  together  these  yeomen  went. 
With  blades  both  browne  and  bright. 

37.  To  have  scene  how  these  yeomen  together  fought 

Two  howers  of  a  summer's  day; 
It  was  neither  Guy  nor  Robin  Hood 
That  fettled  them  to  flye  away. 

38.  Robin  was  reacheles'^  on  a  roote, 

And  stumbled  at  that  tyde. 
And  Guy  was  quicke  and  nimble  with-all, 
And  hitt  him  ore  the  left  side. 

^  Garlande,  perhaps  «the  ring  within  which  the  prick  was  set'*:  and  the 
fricke-watide  perhaps  a  pole  or  stick.  The  terms  are  not  easy  to  understand 
clearly. 

*  Reckless,  careless. 


THE   BALLAD  I317 

39.  "Ah,  deere  Lady!**  sayd  Robin  Hoode, 

"Thou  art  both  mother  and  may!* 
I  thinke  it  was  never  man's  destinye 
To  dye  before  his  day." 

40.  Robin  thought  on  Our  Lady  deere, 

And  soone  leapt  up  againe, 
And  thus  he  came  with  an  awkwarde"^  stroke; 
Good  Sir  Guy  hee  has  slayne. 

41.  He  tooke  Sir  Guy's  head  by  the  hayre. 

And  sticked  it  on  his  bowe's  end: 
«  Thou  has  beene  traytor  all  thy  life. 
Which  thing  must  have  an  ende.* 

42.  Robin  pulled  forth  an  Irish  kniffe, 

And  nicked  Sir  Guy  in  the  face. 
That  he  was  never  on^  a  woman  borne 
Could  tell  who  Sir  Guye  was. 

43.  Sales,  Lye  there,  lye  there,  good  Sir  Guye, 

And  with  me  not  wrothe; 
If  thou  have  had  the  worse  stroakes  at  my  hand, 
Thou  shalt  have  the  better  cloathe. 

44.  Robin  did  off  his  gowne  of  greene, 

Sir  Guye  he  did  it  throwe; 
And  he  put  on  that  capull-hyde 
That  clad  him  topp  to  toe. 

45.  "  Tis  bowe,  the  arrowes,  and  litle  home, 

And  with  me  now  I'll  beare; 
For  now  I  will  goe  to  Barnesdale, 
To  see  how  my  men  doe  fare.* 

46.  Robin  sett  Guye's  home  to  his  mouth, 

A  lowd  blast  in  it  he  did  blow; 
That  beheard  the  sheriffe  of  Nottingham, 
As  he  leaned  under  a  lowe.* 

47.  "Hearken!  hearken!**  sayd  the  sheriffe, 

"I  heard  noe  tydings  but  good; 
For  yonder  I  heare  Sir  Guye's  home  blowe, 
For  he  hath  slaine  Robin  Hoode. 

'■  Maiden. 

'  Dangerous,  or  perhaps  simply  backward,  backhanded. 

•^On  is  frequently  used  for  o/. 

4  Hillock. 


i.3i8 


THE   BALLAD 

48.  <<  For  yonder  I  heare  Sir  Guye's  home  blowe, 

It  blowes  soe  well  in  tyde, 
For  yonder  comes  that  wighty  yeoman 
Cladd  in  his  capull-hyde. 

49.  "  Come  hither,   thou  good  Sir  Guy, 

Aske  of  mee  what  thou  wilt  have:** 
«ril  none  of  thy  gold,**  sayes  Robin  Hood, 
<*  Nor  I'll  none  of  it  have. 

50.  <*But  now  I  have  slaine  the  master,**  he  sayd, 

"  Let  me  goe  strike  the  knave ; 
This  is  all  the  reward  I  aske. 
Nor  noe  other  will  I  have.** 

51.  <<  Thou  art  a  madman,**  said  the  sheriffe, 

«  Thou  sholdest  have  had  a  knight's  fee; 
Seeing  thy  asking  hath  beene  soe  badd, 
Well  granted  it  shall  be.** 

52.  But  Litle  John  heard  his  master  speake, 

Well  he  knew  that  was  his  steven;* 
<<Now  shall  I  be  loset,**  quoth  Litle  John, 
"With  Christ's  might  in  heaven.** 

53.  But  Robin  hee  hyed  him  towards  Litle  John, 

Hee  thought  hee  wold  loose  him  belive; 
The  sheriffe  and  all  his  companye 
Fast  after  him  did  drive. 

54.  "  Stand  abacke  !  stand  abacke !  **  sayd  Robin ; 

"  Why  draw  you  mee  soe  neere  ? 
It  was  never  the  use  in  our  countrye 
One's  shrift  another  should  heere.** 

55.  But  Robin  pulled  forth  an  Irysh  kniffe. 

And  losed  John  hand  and  foote, 
And  gave  him  Sir  Guye's  bow  in  his  hand. 
And  bade  it  be  his  boote. 

56.  But  John  tooke  Guye's  bow  iii  his  hand 

(His  arrowes  were  rawstye  ^  by  the  roote) ; 
The  sherriffe  saw  Litle  John  draw  a  bow 
And  fettle  him  to  shoote. 

57.  Towards  his  house  in  Nottingham 

He  fled  full  fast  away, 


1  Voice.  "Rusty. 


THE   BALLAD  1319 

And  SO  did  all  his  companye. 
Not  one  behind  did  stay. 

58.     But  he  cold  neither  soe  fast  goe, 
Nor  away  soe  fast  runn, 
But  Litle  John,  with  an  arrow  broade, 
Did  cleave  his  heart  in  twinn. 


THE  HUNTING  OF  THE  CHEVIOT 

[This  is  the  older  and  better  version  of  the  famous  ballad.     The  younger 
version  was  the  subject  of  Addison's  papers  in  the  Spectator.] 

1.  ry^HE  Percy  out  of  Northumberlande, 

I         and  a  vowe  to  God  mayd  he 

That  he  would  hunte  in  the  mountayns 
of  Cheviot  within  days  thre, 
In  the  magger'  of  doughty  Douglas, 
and  all  that  ever  with  him  be. 

2.  The  fattiste  hartes  in  all  Cheviot 

he  sayd  he  would  Icyll,   and  cary  them  away: 
*Be  my  feth,'^  sayd  the  doughty  Douglas  agayn, 
"I  will  let^  that  hontyng  if  that  I  may."*^ 

3.  Then  the  Percy  out  of  Banborowe  cam, 

with  him  a  myghtee  meany,^ 
With  fifteen  hondred  archares  bold  of  blood  and  bone 
they  were  chosen  out  of  shyars  thre. 

4.  This  began  on  a  Monday  at  morn,  • 

in  Cheviot  the  hillys  so  he ; 
The  chyld  may  rue  that  ys  unborn, 
it  was  the  more  pitte. 

5.  The  dryvars  thorowe  the  woodes  went, 

for  to  reas  the  deer; 
Bowmen  byckarte  uppone  the  bent* 
with  their  browd  arrows  cleare. 

6.  Then  the  wyld  thorowe  the  woodes  went, 

on  every  syde  shear; 
Greahondes  thorowe  the  grevis  glent,'' 
for  to  kyll  their  deer. 

7.  This  begane  in  Cheviot  the  hyls  abone, 

yerly  on  a  Monnyn-day; 

• 

i<Maugje,*  in  spite  of.  ^ Hinder.  ^Company. 

*Skinnished  on  the  field.  *Ran  through  the  groves. 


[3ao 


THE   BALLAD 

Be  that  it  drewe  to  the  hour  of  noon, 
a  hondred  fat  hartes  ded  ther  lay. 

8.  They  blewe  a  mort^  iippone  the  bent, 

they  semblyde  on  sydis  shear; 
To  the  qiiyrry  then  the  Percy  went, 
to  see  the  bryttlynge^  of  the  deere. 

9.  He  sayd,  <*  It  was  the  Douglas  promys 

this  day  to  met  me  hear; 
But  I  wyste  he  wolde  faylle,  verament;** 
a  great  oth  the  Percy  swear. 

10.  At  the  laste  a  squyar  of  Northumberlande 

lokyde  at  his  hand  full  ny ; 
He  was  war  a  the  doughtie  Douglas  commynge, 
with  him  a  myghte  meany. 

11.  Both  with  spear,  bylle,  and  brande, 

yt  was  a  myghte  sight  to  se ; 
Hardyar  men,  both  of  hart  nor  hande, 
were  not  in  Cristiante. 

12.  They  were  twenty  hondred  spear-men  good, 

withoute  any  fail ; 
They  were  borne  along  be  the  water  a  Twyde, 
yth  bowndes  of  Tividale. 

13.  "Leave  of  the  brytlyng  of  the  deer,'*  he  said, 

"and  to  your  bows  look  ye  tayk  good  hede; 
For  never  sithe  ye  were  on  your  mothers  borne 
had  ye  never  so  mickle  nede.'* 

14.  The  doughty  Douglas  on  a  stede, 

he  rode  alle  his  men  beforne; 
His  armor  glytteyrde  as  dyd  a  glede;' 
a  boldar  barne  was  never  born. 

15.  "Tell  me  whose  men  ye  are,'*  he  says, 

"  or  whose  men  that  ye  be : 
Who  gave  youe  leave  to  hunte  in  this  Cheviot  chays, 
in  the  spyt  of  myn  and  of  me.** 

16.  The  first  man  that  ever  him  an  answer  mayd, 

yt  was  the  good  lord  Percy : 
"We  wyll  not  tell  the  whose  men  we  are,**  he  says, 
"dor  whose  men  that  we  be ; 

■'Blast  blown  when  game  is  killed.  *  Quartering,  cutting.  'Flame. 


THE   BALLAD  1 32 1 

But  we  wyll  hounte  here  in  this  chays, 
in  spyt  of  thyne  and  of  the. 

17.  «  The  fattiste  hartes  in  all  Cheviot 

we  have  kyld,  and  cast  to  carry  them  away:'> 
«Be  my  troth,  >'  sayd  the  doughty  Douglas  agayn, 
"therefor  the  tone  of  us  shall  die  this  day.*> 

18.  Then  sayd  the  doughte  Douglas 

unto  the  lord  Percy, 
«To  kyll  alle  thes  giltles  men, 
alas,  it  wear  great  pitte! 

19.  <<But,  Percy,  thowe  art  a  lord  of  lande, 

I  am  a  yerle  callyd  within  my  contre; 
Let  all  our  men  uppone  a  parti  stande, 
and  do  the  battell  of  the  and  of  me.*^ 

20.  "Nowe  Cristes  curse  on  his  crowne,*  sayd  the  lord 

Percy, 
"whosoever  thereto  says  nay; 
Be  my  troth,  doughty  Douglas,  >>  he  says, 
"thow  shalt  never  se  that  day. 

21.  "Nethar  in  Ynglonde,   Skottlonde,  nor  France, 

nor  for  no  man  of  a  woman  born, 
But,  and  fortune  be  my  chance, 

I  dar  met  him,  one  man  for  one.* 

22.  Then  bespayke  a  squyar  of  Northumberlande, 

Richard  Wytharyngton  was  his  name: 
"It  shall  never  be  told  in  Sothe-Ynglonde,*  he  says. 
"  To  Kyng  Herry  the  Fourth  for  shame. 

23.  "I  wat  youe  byn  great  lordes  twa, 

I  am  a  poor  squyar  of  lande: 
I  wylle  never  se  my  captayne  fyght  on  a  fylde, 

and  stande  my  selffe  and  looke  on. 
But  whylle  I  may  my  weppone  welde, 

I  wylle  not  fayle  both  hart  and  hande.* 

24.  That  day,   that  day,   that  dredfull  day! 

t*:2  first  fit  here  I  fynde;^ 
And  you  wyll  hear  any  more  a  the  hountyng  a  the 
Cheviot 
yet  ys  ther  mor  behynde. 

Perhaps  *  finish.* 


1322 


THE    BALLAD 


35.     The  Yngglyshe  men  had  their  bowys  ybent, 
ther  hartes  were  good  yenoughe; 
The  first  of  arrows  that  they  shote  off, 
seven  skore  spear-men  they  sloughe. 

26.  Yet  bides  the  yerl6  Douglas  upon  the  bent, 

a  captayne  good  yenoughe, 
And  that  was  sene  verament, 

for  he  wrought  hem  both  wo  and  wouche. 

27.  The  Douglas  partyd  his  host  in  thre, 

like  a  chief  chieftain  of  pryde; 
With  sure  spears  of  myghtty  tre, 
they  cum  in  on  every  syde: 

28.  Throughe  our  Yngglyshe  archery 

gave  many  a  wounde  fulle  wyde; 
Many  a  doughty  they  garde  to  dy, 
which  ganyde  them  no  pryde. 

29.  The  Ynglyshe  men  let  ther  bowes  be, 

and  pulde  out  brandes  that  were  brighte; 
It  was  a  heavy  syght  to  se 

bryght  swordes  on  basnites  lyght. 

30.  Thorowe  ryche  male  and  myneyeple,* 

many  sterne  they  strocke  down  straight, 
Many  a  freyke^  that  was  fulle  fre, 
there  under  foot  dyd  lyght. 

31.  At  last  the  Douglas  and  the  Percy  met, 

lyk  to  captayns  of  myght  and  of  mayne; 
The  swapte  together  tylle  they  both  swat, 
with  swordes  that  were  of  fine  milan. 

32.  These  worthy  freckys  for  to  fyght, 

ther-to  they  were  fulle  fayne, 
Tylle  the  bloode  out  off  their  basnetes  sprente 
as  ever  dyd  hail  or  rayn. 

33.  « Yield  thee,   Percy,**  sayd  the  Douglas, 

"and  i  faith  I  shalle  thee  brynge 
Where  thowe  shalte  have  a  yerls  wagis 
of  Jamy  our  Scottish  kynge. 

34.  «Thou  shalte  have  thy  ransom  fre, 

I  hight'  the  here  this  thinge; 

^<<A  gauntlet  covering  hand  and  forearm. »    ^Man.     'Promise 


THE  BALLAD  I 323 

For  the  manfullyste  man  yet  art  thow 

that  ever  I  conqueryd  in  fielde  fighttynge.* 

35.  "Nay,>*  sayd  the  lord  Percy, 

<<  I  tolde  it  thee  beforne, 
That  I  wolde  never  yeldyde  be 
to  no  man  of  a  woman  born.^* 

36.  With  that  ther  came  an  arrow  hastely, 

forthe  off  a  myghtty  wane;^ 
It  hath  strekene  the  yerle  Douglas 
in  at  the  brest-bane. 

37.  Thorowe  lyvar  and  lunges  bothe 

the  sharpe  arrowe  ys  gane, 
That  never  after  in  all  his  lyfe-days 

he  spayke  mo  wordes  but  ane : 
That   was,   ^^  Fyghte    ye,  my  myrry  men,  whyllys  ye 
may, 

for  my  lyfe-days  ben  gane.* 

38.  The  Percy  leanyde  on  his  brande, 

and  sawe  the  Douglas  de; 
He  tooke  the  dead  man  by  the  hande, 
and  said,  <^  Wo  ys  me  for  thee ! 

39.  *To    have    savyde   thy   lyfe,  I   would    have    partyde 

with 
my  landes  for  years  three. 
For  a  better  man,  of  hart  nor  of  hande, 
was  not  in  all  the  north  contre.** 

40.  Of  all  that  see  a  Scottish  knyght, 

was  callyd  Sir  He  we  the  Monggombyrry; 
He  saw  the  Douglas  to  the  death  was  dyght, 
he  spendyd  a  spear,  a  trusti  tree. 

41.  He  rode  upon  a  corsiare 

throughe  a  hondred  archery: 
He  never  stynttyde  nor  never  blane,  * 
till  he  came  to  the  good  lord  Percy. 

42.  He  set  upon  the  lorde  Percy 

a  dynte  that  was  full  sore; 
With  a  sure  spear  of  a  myghtte  tree 

clean  thorow  the  body  he  the  Percy  ber,' 

43.  A  the  tother  syde  that  a  man  might  see 

a  large  cloth-yard  and  mare: 

^Meaning  uncertain.     ^ Stopped.     ^Pierced. 


»324 


THE   BALLAD 


Two  better  captayns  were  not  in  Cristiante 
than  that  day  slain  were  there. 

44.  An  archer  off  Northumberlande 

saw  slain  was  the  lord  Percy; 
He  bore  a  bende  bowe  in  his  hand, 
was  made  of  trusti  tree; 

45.  An  arrow,  that  a  cloth-yarde  was  long, 

to  the  harde  stele  halyde  he; 
A  dynt  that  was  both  sad  and  soar 

he  set  on  Sir  Hewe  the  Monggombyrry. 

46.  The  dynt  yt  was  both  sad  and  sore, 

that  he  of  Monggombyrry  set; 
The  swane-fethars  that  his  arrowe  bar 
with  his  hart-blood  they  were  wet. 

47.  There  was  never  a  freak  one  foot  wolde  flee, 

but  still  in  stour^  dyd  stand, 
Hewyng  on  eache  other,  whyle  they  myghte   dree 
with  many  a  balefuU  brande. 

48.  This  battell  begane  in  Cheviot 

an  hour  before  the  none, 
And  when  even-songe  bell  was  rang, 
the  battell  was  not  half  done. 

49.  They  took     ...     on  either  hande 

by  the  lyght  of  the  mone; 
Many  hade  no  strength  for  to  stande, 
in  Cheviot  the  hillys  abon. 

50.  Of  fifteen  hundred  archers  of  Ynglonde 

went  away  but  seventy  and  three; 
Of  twenty  hundred  spear-men  of  Scotlonde. 
but  even  five  and  fifty. 

51.  But  all  were  slayne  Cheviot  within; 

they  had  no  strength  to  stand  on  hy; 
The  chylde  may  rue  that  ys  unborne, 
it  was  the  more  pitte. 

52.  There  was  slayne,  withe  the  lord  Percy, 

Sir  John  of  Agerstone, 
Sir  Rogar,  the  hinde  Hartly, 

Sir  Wyllyam.  the  bold  Hearone. 

^Stress  of  battle. 


THE   BALLAD  I325 

53.  Sir  George,  the  worthy  Loumle, 

a  knyghte  of  great  renown, 
Sir  Raff,  the  ryche  Rugbe, 

with  dyntes  were  beaten  downe. 

54.  For  Wetharryngton  my  harte  was  wo, 

that  ever  he  slayne  shulde  be; 
For  when  both  his  leggis  were  hewyn  in  to, 
yet  he  kneeled  and  fought  on  hys  knee. 

55.  There  was  slayne,  with  the  doughty  Douglas. 

Sir  Hewe  the  Monggombyrry, 
Sir  Davy  Lwdale,  that  worthy  was, 
his  sister's  son  was  he. 

56.  Sir  Charles  a  Murre  in  that  place, 

that  never  a  foot  wolde  fle; 
Sir  Hewe  Maxwelle,  a  lorde  he  was, 
with  the  Douglas  dyd  he  die. 

57.  So  on  the  morrowe  they  mayde  them  biers 

off  birch  and  hasell  so  gray; 
Many  widows,  with  weepyng  tears, 
came  to  fetch  ther  makys'  away. 

58.  Tivydale  may  carpe  of  care, 

Northumberland  may  mayk  great  moan. 

For  two  such  captayns  as  slayne  were  there, 

on  the  March-parti  shall  never  be  none. 

59.  Word  ys  commen  to  Eddenburrowe, 

to  Jamy  the  Scottische  kynge, 
That  doughty  Douglas,  lyff-tenant  of  the  Marches, 
he  lay  slean  Cheviot  within. 

60.  His  handdes  dyd  he  weal  and  wryng, 

he  sayd,  <^Alas,  and  woe  ys  me! 
Such  an  othar  captayn  Skotland  within,** 
he  sayd,  <<  i-f aith  should  never  be.** 

61.  Worde  ys  commyn  to  lovely  Londone, 

till  the  fourth  Harry  our  kynge. 
That  lord  Percy,  leyff-tenante  of  the  Marchis, 
he  lay  slayne  Cheviot  within. 

62.  «God  have  merci  on  his  soule,**  sayde  Kyng  Harry, 

**good  lord,  yf  thy  will  it  be! 


Mates. 


1326  THE   BALLAD 

I  have  a.   hondred   captayns  in  Ynglonde,^'  he  sayd, 

"  as  good  as  ever  was  he : 
But  Percy,   and  I  brook  my  lyfe, 

thy  deth  well  quyte  shall  be.* 

63.  As  our  noble  kynge  mayd  his  avowe, 

lyke  a  noble  prince  of  renown. 
For  the  deth  of  the  lord  Percy 

he  dyd  the  battell  of  Hombyll-down; 

64.  Where  syx  and  thirty  Skottishe  knyghtes 

on  a  day  were  beaten  down : 
Glendale  glytteryde  on  their  armor  bryght, 
over  castille,   towar,   and  town. 

65.  This  was  the  hontynge  of  the  Cheviot, 

that  tear'  begane  this  spurn; 
Old  men  that  knowen  the  grownde  well  enoughe 
call  it  the  battell  of  Otterburn. 

66.  At  Otterburn  begane  this  spume 

upon  a  Monnynday; 
There  was  the  doughty  Douglas  slean 
the  Percy  never  went  away. 

67.  There  was  never  a  tyme  on  the  Marche-partes 

sen  the  Douglas  and  the  Percy  met. 
But  yt  ys  mervele  and  the  rede  blude  tonne  not, 
as  the  rain  does  in  the  stret. 

68.  Jesus  Christ  our  bales^  bete, 

and  to  the  bliss  us  bring! 
Thus  was  the  hunting  of  the  Cheviot; 
God  send  us  alle  good  ending! 


JOHNIE   COCK 

1.  T    tp  Johnie  raise'  in  a  May  morning, 

I    J        Calld  for  water  to  wash  his  hands. 

And  he  has  called  for  his  gude  gray  hounds 
That  lay  bound  in  iron  bands,   bands, 
That  lay  bound  in  iron  bands. 

2.  «Ye'll  busk,*  ye'll  busk  my  noble  dogs, 

Ye'll  busk  and  make  them  boun,* 

*  That  there  ( ?) .    '  Evils.     » Rose.     *  Prepare.     ^  Ready. 


THE  BALLAD  1327 

For  I'm  going  to  the  Braidscaiir  hill 
To  ding  the  dun  deer  doun." 

3.  Johnie's  mother  has  gotten  word  o'  that. 

And  care-bed  she  has  ta'en:' 
*0  Johnie,  for  my  benison, 

I  beg  you'll  stay  at  hame; 
For  the  wine  so  red,  and  the  well-baken  bread. 

My  Johnie  shall  want  nane. 

4.  "  There  are  seven  forsters  at  Pickeram  Side, 

At  Pickeram  where  they  dwell. 
And  for  a  drop  of  thy  heart's  bluid 
They  wad  ride  the  fords  of  hell." 

5.  But  Johnie  has  cast  off  the  black  velvet, 

And  put  on  the  Lincoln  twine, 
.  And  he  is  on  the  goode  greenwood 
As  fast  as  he  could  gang. 

6.  Johnie  lookit  east,  and  Johnie  lookit  west, 

And  he  lookit  aneath  the  sun. 
And  there  he  spied  the  dun  deer  sleeping 
Aneath  a  buss  o'  whun.^ 

7.  Johnie  shot,  and  the  dun  deer  lap,' 

And  she  lap  wondrous  wide. 
Until  they  came  tp  the  wan  water, 
And  he  stem'd  her  of  her  pride. 

8.  He  has  ta'en  out  the  little  pen-knife, 

'Twas  full  three  quarters*  long. 
And  he  has  ta'en  out  of  that  dun  deer 
The  liver  but  and*  the  tongue. 

9.  They  eat  of  the  flesh,  and  they  drank  of  the  blood, 

And  the  blood  it  was  so  sweet. 
Which  caused  Johnie  and  his  bloody  hounds 
To  fall  in  a  deep  sleep. 

10.     By  then  came  an  old  palmer. 

And  an  ill  death  may  he  die  I 
For  he's  away  to  Pickeram  Side 
As  fast  as  he  can  drie.* 

*Has  fallen  ill  with  anxiety.  *  Quarter  =  ltie  fourta  part  of  a  yard. 

-Bush  of  whin,  furze.  *«But  and  »^  as  well  as. 

3 Leaped.  'Bear,  endure. 


1328  THE    BALLAD 

11.  *'  What  news,  what  news  ?  *    says  the  Seven  Forsters, 

*<  What  news  have  ye  brought  to  me  ?  '* 
«I  have  no  news,"  the  palmer  said, 
"  But  what  I  saw  with  my  eye. 

12.  "As  I  came  in  by  Braidisbanks, 

And  down  among  the  whuns, 
The  bonniest  youngster  e'er  I  saw 
Lay  sleepin  amang  his  hunds. 

13.  *' The  shirt  that  was  upon  his  back 

Was  o'  the  holland  fine; 
The  doublet  which  was  over  that 
Was  o'  the  Lincoln  twine." 

14.  Up.  bespake  the  Seven  Forsters, 

Up  bespake  they  ane  and  a'  : 

<<  O  that  is  Johnie  o'  Cockleys  Well, 

And  near  him  we  will  draw.'^ 

15.  O  the  first  stroke  that  they  gae  him. 

They  struck  him  oflE  by  the  knee; 
Then  up  bespake  his  sister's  son : 
"  O  the  next  '11  gar^  him  die  !  " 

x6.     "  O  some  they  count  ye  well  wight  men, 
But  I  do  count  ye  nane; 
For  you  might  well  ha'  waken'd  me. 
And  ask'd  gin  t  wad  be  ta'en. 

17.     "The  wildest  wolf  as  in  a'  this  wood 
Wad  not  ha'  done  so  by  me; 
She'd  ha'  wet  her  foot  i'  the  wan  water. 

And  sprinkled  it  o'er  my  brae. 
And  if  that  wad  not  ha'  waken'd  me, 
She  wad  ha'  gone  and  let  me  be. 

,  .i8.     "O  bows  of  yew,  if  ye  be  true. 

In  London,  where  ye  were  bought. 
Fingers  five,  get  up  belive,-' 

Manhuid  shall  fail  me  nought." 

19.     Heh  as  kill'd  the  Seven  Forsters, 
He  has  kill'd  them  all  but  ane, 
And  that  wan  scarce  to  Pickeram  Side, 
To  carry  the  bode-words  hame. 

*  Make,  cause.  ''Quickly. 


THE  BALLAD  1 329 

20.  <<Is  there  never  a  [bird]  in  a'  this  wood 

That  will  tell  what  I  can  say; 
That  will  go  to  Cockleys  Well, 

Tell  my  mither  to  fetch  me  away?* 

21.  There  was  a  [bird]  into  that  wood, 

That  carried  the  tidings  away, 
And  many  ae'  was  the  well-wight  man 
At  the  fetching  o'  Johnie  away. 


SIR   PATRICK   SPENS 

1.  rr^HE  king  sits  in  Dumferling  tonne, 

I  Drinking  the  blude-reid  wine: 

"  O  whar  will  I  get  guid  sailor, 
To  sail  this  ship  of  mine  ?  *^ 

2.  Up  and  spak  an  eldern  knight. 

Sat  at  the  kings  right  kne : 
<<Sir  Patrick  Spens  is  the  best  sailor. 
That  sails  upon  the  sea.'> 

3.  The  king  has  written  a  braid  letter,' 

And  sign'd  it  wi'  his  hand, 
And  sent  it  to  Sir  Patrick  Spens, 
Was  walking  on  the  sand. 

4.  The  first  line  that  Sir  Patrick  read, 

A  loud  laugh  laughed  he; 
The  next  line  that  Sir  Patrick  read. 
The  tear  blinded  his  ee. 

5.  "  O  wha  is  this  has  done  this  deed, 

This  ill  deed  done  to  me. 
To  send  me  out  this  time  o'  the  year. 
To  sail  upon  the  sea! 

6.  "Make  haste,  make  haste,  my  mirry  men  all. 

Our  guide  ship  sails  the  morne:" 
"O  say  na  sae,  my  master  dear. 
For  I  fear  a  deadlie  storme.* 

7.  "Late,  late  yestreen  I  saw  the  new  moone,' 

Wi'  the  auld  moone  in  hir  arme, 
'  One. 

^  ^^  A  braid  letter,  open  or  patent,  in  opposition  to  close  rolls. » —  Percy. 

^  Note   that  it  is   the   sight  of  the  new  moon  late  iu  the  evening  which 

makes  a  bad  omen. 

ui — 84 


1330  THE  BALLAD 

And  I  fear,  I  fear,  my  dear  master. 
That  we  will  come  to  harme.** 

8.  O  our  Scots  nobles  were  right  laith 

To  weet  their  cork-heeled  shoone; 
But  lang  owre  a'  the  play  wer  play'd, 
Their  hats  they  swam  aboone. 

9.  O  lang,  lang  may  their  ladies  sit, 

W  their  fans  into  their  hand, 
Or  e'er  they  see  Sir  Patrick  Spens 
Cum  sailing  to  the  land. 

10.  O  lang,  lang  may  the  ladies  stand, 

Wi'  their  gold  kerns  ^  in  their  hair, 
Waiting  for  their  ain  dear  lords. 
For  they'll  se  thame  na  main 

11.  Half  owre,  half  owre  to  Aberdour, 

It's  fiftie  fadom  deep. 
And  their  lies  guid  Sir  Patrick  Spens, 
Wi'  the  Scots  lords  at  his  feet. 


THE   BONNY  EARL  OF  MURRAY^ 

r.     \/E  Highlands,  and  ye  Lawlands, 
J         Oh  where  have  you  been  ? 

They  have  slain  the  Earl  of  Murray. 
And  they  layd  him  on  the  green. 

2.  "Now  wae  be  to  thee,  Huntly! 

And  wherefore  did  you  sae? 
I  bade  you  bring  him  wi'  you. 
But  forbade  you  him  to  slay." 

3.  He  was  a  braw  gallant, 

And  he  rid  at  the  ring;' 
And  the  bonny  Earl  of  Murray, 
Oh  he  might  have  been  a  king! 

4.  He  was  a  braw  gallant, 

.     And  he  play'd  at  the  ba'; 

And  the  bonny  Earl  of  Murray 

Was  the  flower  amang  them  a*. 
^  Combs. 

'  James  Stewart,  Earl  of  Murray,  was  killed  by  the  Earl  of  Huntly's  fol- 
lowers, February,  1592.    The  second  stanza  is  spoken,  of  course,  by  the  King. 

'  Piercing  with  the  lance  a  suspended  ring,  as  one  rode  at  full  speed,  was 
a  favorite  sport  of  the  day. 


THE  BALLAD 

5.  He  was  a  braw  gallant. 

And  he  play'd  at  the  glove  ;i 
And  the  bonny  Earl  of  Murray, 
Oh  he  was  the  Queen's  love! 

6.  Oh  lang  will  his  lady 

Look  o'er  the  Castle  Down, 
E'er  she  see  the  Earl  of  Murray 
Come  sounding  thro  the  town! 


1331 


MARY  HAMILTON 

I.     \  \  jord's  gane  to  the  kitchen. 

And  word's  gane  to  the  ha*. 
That  Marie  Hamilton  has  born  a  bairn 
To  the  highest  Stewart  of  a*. 


w 


2.  She's  tyed  it  in  her  apron 

And  she's  thrown  it  in  the  sea; 
Says,  "  Sink  ye,  swim  ye,  bonny  wee  babe. 
You'll  ne'er  get  mair  o'  me.^* 

3.  Down  then  cam  the  auld  Queen, 

Goud  ^  tassels  tying  her  hair: 
«0  Marie,  where's  the  bonny  wee  babe 
That  I  heard  greet  ^  sae  sair?* 

4.  "  There  was  never  a  babe  intill  my  room. 

As  little  designs  to  be; 
It  was  but  a  touch  o'  my  sair  side. 
Came  o'er  my  fair  bodie.*> 

5.  <*0  Marie,  put  on  your  robes  o'  black, 

Or  else  your  robes  o'  brown. 
For  ye  maun  gang  wi'  me  the  night. 
To  see  fair  Edinbro  town." 

6.  <<I  winna  put  on  my  robes  o'  black, 

Nor  yet  my  robes  o'  brown; 
But  I'll  put  on  my  robes  o'  white, 
To  shine  through  Edinbro  town.>* 

7.  When  she  gaed  up  the  Cannogate, 

She  laugh'd  loud  laughters  three; 
But  when  she  cam  down  the  Cannogate 
The  tear  blinded  her  ee. 

1  Probably  this  reference  is  to  the  glove  worn  by  knights  as  a  lady's  favor. 
"  Gold.  =•  Weep. 


1332 


1  Shoe. 
'^  Moan. 

3 


THE   BALLAD 

8.  When  she  gaed  up  the  Parliament  stair, 

The  heel  cam  aflf  her  shee;* 
And  lang  or  she  cam  down  again 
She  was  condemn'd  to  dee. 

9.  When  she  cam  down  the  Cannogate, 

The  Cannogate  sae  free, 
Many  a  ladie  look'd  o'er  her  window. 
Weeping  for  this  ladie. 

10.  "Make  never  meen'  for  me,*  she  says, 

"  Make  never  meen  for  me ; 
Seek  never  grace  frae  a  graceless  face. 
For  that  ye'll  never  see. 

11.  "Bring  me  a  bottle  of  wine,*  she  says, 

"  The  best  that  e'er  ye  hae. 
That  I  may  drink  to  my  weil-wishers. 
And  they  may  drink  to  me. 

12.  "And  here's  to  the  jolly  sailor  lad 

That  sails  upon  the  faem; 
But    let  not  my  father  nor  mother  get  wit 
But  that  I  shall  come  again. 

13.  "  And  here's  to  the  jolly  sailor  lad 

That  sails  upon  the  sea; 
But  let  not  my  father  nor  mother  get  wit 
O'  the  death  that  I  maun  dee. 

14.  "  Oh  little  did  my  mother  think. 

The  day  she  cradled  me. 
What  lands  I  was  to  travel  through, 
What  death  I  was  to  dee, 

15.  "Oh  little  did  my  father  think, 

The  day  he  held  up^  me, 
What  lands  I  was  to  travel  through. 
What  death  I  was  to  dee. 

16.  "  Last  night  I  wash'd  the  Queen's  feet. 

And  gently  laid  her  down; 
And  a'  the  thanks  I've  gotten  the  nicht 
To  be  hangd  in  Edinbro  town! 


Held   up,  lifted   up,  recognized   as   his  lawful   child, — a    world-wide  and 
ancient  ceremony. 


THE  BALLAD  1233 

17.     "Last  nicht  there  was  four  Maries, 
The  nicht  there'll  be  but  three; 
There  was  Marie  Seton,  and  Marie  Beton, 
And  Marie  Carmichael,  and  me." 


BONNIE  GEORGE  CAMPBELL 


H 


CH  upon  Highlands, 
and  low  upon  Tay, 
Bonnie  George  Campbell 
rade  out  on  a  day. 


2.  Saddled  and  bridled 

and  gallant  rade  he ; 
Hame  cam  his  guid  horse, 
but  never  cam  he. 

3.  Out  cam  his  auld  niither 

greeting  fu'  sair. 
And  out  cam  his  bonnie  bride 
riving  her  hair. 

4.  Saddled  and  bridled 

and  booted  rade  he ; 

Toom  1  hame  cam  the  saddle, 

but  never  came  he. 

5.  "  My  meadow  lies  green, 

and  my  corn  is  unshorn. 
My  barn  is  to  build, 

and  my  babe  is  unborn.*^ 

6.  Saddled  and  bridled 

and  booted  rade  he; 
Toom  hame  cam  the  saddle, 
but  never  cam  he. 

>  Empty. 


1334  THE  BALLAD 


BESSIE   BELL  AND  MARY  GRAYi 

1.  >^~N   Bessie  Bell  and  Mary  Gray, 
\)         They  war  twa  bonnie  lasses! 

They  bigpfit*  a  bower  on  yon  burn-brae," 
And  theekit*  it  oer  wi  rashes. 

2.  They  theekit  it  oer  wi'  rashes  green. 

They  theekit  it  oer  wi'  heather: 
But  the  pest  cam  frae  the  burrows-town,    . 
And  slew  them  baith  thegither. 

3.  They  thought  to  lie  in  Methven  kirk-yard 

Amang  their  noble  kin; 
But  they  maun  lye  in  Stronach  haugh, 
To  biek  forenent  the  sin.* 

4.  And  Bessie  Bell  and  Mary  Gray, 

They  war  twa  bonnie  lasses; 
They  biggit  a  bower  on  yon  burn-brae, 
And  theekit  it  oer  wi'  rashes. 


THE   THREE   RAVENS^ 

1.  'T^HERE  were  three  ravens  sat  on  a  tree, 

I         Downe  a  downe,  hay  down,  hay  downe,' 
There  were  three  ravens  sat  on  a  tree. 
With  a  downe, 
There  were  three  ravens  sat  on  a  tree, 
They  were  as  blacke  as  they  might  be. 

With  a  downe  derrie,  derrie,  derrie,  downe,  downe. 

2.  The  one  of  them  said  to  his  mate, 

«  Where  shall  we  our  breakfast  take  ?  '* 

3.  <*  Downe  in  yonder  greene  field 

There  lies  a  knight  slain  under  his  shield. 

1  Founded  on  an  actual  event  of  the  plague,  near  Perth,  in  1645.     See  the 
interesting  account  in  Professor  Child's  <Ballads,>  Part  vii.,  p.  75f. 

2  Built. 

"  A  hill  sloping  down  to  a  brook. 
*  Thatched. 

*To  bake  in  the  rays  of  the  sun. 

•The    counterpart,  or   perhaps    parody,    of    this   ballad,    called    <The    Twa 
Corbies, >  is  better  known  than  the  exquisite  original. 

'The  refrain,  or  burden,  differs  in  another  version  of  the  ballad. 


THE    BALLAD  '  1335 

4.  <«His  hounds  they  lie  down  at  his  feete, 
So  well  they  can  their  master  keepe.^ 

5.  "His  haukes  they  flie  so  eagerly, 
There's  no  fowle  dare  him  come  nie.* 

6.  Downe  there  comes  a  fallow  doe, 

As  great  with  young  as  she  might  goe. 

7.  She  lift  up  his  bloudy  head, 

And  kist  his  wounds  that  were  so  red. 

8.  She  got  him  up  upon  her  backe. 
And  carried  him  to  earthen  lake.'' 

9.  She  buried  him  before  the  prime, 

She  was  dead  herselfe  ere  even-song  time. 

10.     God  send  every  gentleman 

Such  haukes,  such  hounds,  and  such  a  leman. 


LORD  RANDAL 

1.  "/^  WHERE  hae  ye  been,  Lord  Randal,  my  son? 

\_^     O  where  hae  ye  been,  my  handsome  young  man  ? 

"I  hae  been  to  the  wild  wood;  mother,  make  my  bed 
soon. 
For  I'm  weary  wi'  hunting,  and  fain  wald  lie  down.** 

2.  "  Where  gat  ye  your  dinner,  Lord  Randal,  my  son  ? 
"Where  gat  ye  your  dinner,  my  handsome  young  man?** 
«I  din'd  wi'  my  true-love;  mother,  make  my  bed  soon, 
For  I'm  weary  wi'  hunting,  and  fain  wald  lie  down.** 

3.  "What  gat  ye  to  your  dinner.  Lord  Randal,  my  son? 
What  gat  ye  to  your  dinner,  my  handsome  young  man?*' 
"I  gat  eels  boiled  in  broo ;*  mother,  make  my  bed  soon, 
For  I'm  weary  wi'  hunting,  and  fain  wald  lie  down.** 

4.  "  What  became  o'   your   bloodhounds.  Lord    Randal,  my  son  ? 
What    became    o'    your    bloodhounds,    my    handsome    young 

man  ?  ** 
"  O  they  swell'd  and  they  died ;   mother,  make  my  bed   soon, 
For  I'm  weary  wi'  hunting,  and  fain  wald  lie  down.** 

*  Guard.  *  Shroud  of  earth,  burial. 

*  Sweetheart,  darling,  literally  "dear-one**  (liefman).     The  word  had  origi- 
nally no  offensive  meaning. 

*  Broth. 


1336  THE  BALLAD 

5.     "O  I  fear  you  are  poison'd,  Lord  Randal,  my  son! 
O  I  fear  you  are  poison'd,  my  handsome  young  man!** 
<<0  yes!  I'm  poison'd;  mother,  make  my  bed  soon, 
For  I'm  sick  at  the  heart,  and  I  fain  wald  lie  down.*** 


EDWARD  2 

1.  **  "I  ^  /"HV  dois  your  brand  sae  drap  wi  bluid, 

YY  Edward,   Edward, 

Why  dois  your  brand  sae  drap  wi  bluid. 
And  why  sae  sad  gang  ye'e  O?** 
"  O  I  hae  killed   my  hauke  sae  guid, 

Mither,  mither, 
O  I  hae  killed  my  hauke  sae  guid, 
And  I  had  nae  mair  bot  hee  O.** 

2.  "Your  haukis  bluid  was  nevir  sae  reid, 

Edward,   Edward, 
Your  haukis  bluid  was  nevir  sae  reid, 
My  deir  son  I  tell  thee  O.^* 
*  O  I  hae  killed  my  reid-roan  steid, 

Mither,  mither, 
O  I  hae  killed  my  reid-roan  steid. 
That  erst  was  sae  fair  and  frie  O.** 

3.  "Your  steid  was  auld,  and  ye  hae  gat  mair, 

Edward,  Edward, 
Your  steid  was  auld,  and  ye  hae  gat  mair. 
Sum  other  dule  ye  drie  O.^*' 
"  O  I  hae  killed  my  fadir  deir, 

Mither,   mither, 
O  I  hae  killed  my  fadir  deir, 
Alas,  and  wae  is  mee  O !  >* 

'Frogs,  toads,  snakes,  and  the  like  were  often  served  for  fish,  and  of 
course  were  supposed  to  act  as  a  poison.  One  variant  has  a  verse  to  elabor- 
ate this:  — 

"Where  gat  she  those  eels.  Lord  Randal,  my  son? 

Where  gat  she  those  eels,  my  handsome  young  man?'* 

« 'Neath  the  bush  o'  brown  bracken;  mother,  make  my  bed  soon, 

For  I'm  weary  wi'  hunting,  and  fain  wald  lie  down.** 

'One  of  the  finest  of  our  ballads.  It  was  sent  from  Scotland  to  Percy  by 
David   Dalrymple. 

*  You  suffer  some  other  sorrow. 


THE   BALLAD 

4.  "And  whatten  penance  wul  ye  drie,  for  that. 

Edward,   Edward, 
And  whatten  penance  wul  ye  drie,  for  that? 
My  deir  son,  now  tell  me  0.*> 
"I'll  set  my  feit  in  yonder  boat, 

Mither,  mither, 
I'll  set  my  feit  in  yonder  boat, 
And  I'll  fare  over  the  sea  0.>* 

5.  "  And  what  wul  ye  doe  wi'  your  towers  and  your  ha', 

Edward,   Edward, 
And  what  wul  ye  doe  wi'  your  towers  and  your  ha'. 
That  were  sae  fair  to  see  O  ?  >* 
"  I'll  let  them  stand  till  they  doun  fa', 

Mither,  mither, 
I'll  let  them  stand  till  they  doun  fa', 
For  here  nevir  mair  maun  I  bee  O.'^ 

6.  "And  what  wul  ye  leive  to  your  bairns  and  your  wife, 

Edward,  Edward, 
And  what  wtil  ye  leive  to  your  bairns  and  your  wife. 
When  ye  gang  over  the  sea  O  ?  '^ 
"  The  warldis  room ;    let  them  beg  thrae  life, 

Mither,   mither. 
The  warldis  room ;    let  them  beg  thrae  life, 
For  them  never  mair  wul  I  see  0.>^ 

7.  "And  what  wul  ye  leive  to  your  ain  mither  dear, 

Edward,   Edward, 
And  what  will  ye  leive  to  your  ain  mither  dear? 
My  dear  son,   now  tell  me  O.'* 
"  The  curse  of  hell  frae  me  sail  ye  beir, 

Mither,  mither. 
The  curse  of  hell  frae  me  sail  ye  beir, 
Sic  counsels  ye  gave  to  me  O.*^ 


1337 


'  T 


THE   TWA    BROTHERS 

HERE  were  twa  brethren  in  the  north, 
They  went  to  the  school  thegither; 
The  one  unto  the  other  said, 
"  Will  you  try  a  warsle  '  afore  ?  * 

1  Wrestle. 


133  = 


THE   BALLAD 

2.  They  warsled  up,  they  warsled  down, 

Till  Sir  John  fell  to  the  ground, 
And  there  was  a  knife  in  Sir  Willie's  pouch, 
Gied  him  a  deadlie  wound. 

3.  "Oh  brither  dear,  take  me  on  your  back, 

Carry  me  to  yon  burn  clear. 
And  wash  the  blood  from  off  my  wound. 
And  it  will  bleed  nae  mair.>> 

4.  He  took  him  up  upon  his  back. 

Carried  him  to  yon  burn  clear. 
And  washed  the  blood  from  off  his  wound, 
But  aye  it  bled  the  mair. 

5.  <^  Oh  brither  dear,  take  me  on  your  back. 

Carry  me  to  yon  kirk-yard. 
And  dig  a  grave  baith  wide  and  deep, 
And  lay  my  body  there.  >^ 

6.  He's  taen  him  up  upon  his  back, 

Carried  him  to  yon  kirk-yard, 
And  dug  a  grave  baith  deep  and  wide, 
And  laid  his  body  there. 

7.  <<But  what  will  I  say  to  my  father  dear, 

Gin  he  chance  to  say,  Willie,  whar's  John?** 
<<Oh  say  that  he's  to  England  gone. 
To  buy  him  a  cask  of  wine.** 

8.  **And  what  will  I  say  to  my  mother  dear. 

Gin  she  chance  to  say,  Willie,  whar's  John?^- 
*Oh  say  that  he's  to  England  gone 
To  buy  her  a  new  silk  gown.** 

9.  "And  what  will  I  say  to  my  sister  dear. 

Gin  she  chance  to  say,  Willie,  whar's  John  ?  ** 
"Oh  say  that  he's  to  England  gone, 
To  buy  her  a  wedding  ring.** 

10.     "  But  what  will  I  say  to  her  you  loe '  dear, 
Gin  she  cry.  Why  tarries  my  John  ?  ** 
"Oh  tell  her  I  lie  in  Kirk-land  fair, 
And  home  again  will  never  come,*^ 

1  Love. 


THE  BALLAD  1339 


BABYLON;  OR  THE   BONNIE   BANKS   O'   FORDIE 


•T 


HERE  were  three  ladies  lived  in  a  bower. 
Eh  vow  bonnie, 
And  they  went  out  to  pull  a  flower 
On  the  bonnie  banics  o'  Fordie. 


2.  They  hadna  pu'ed  a  flower  but  ane, 
When  up  started  to  them  a  banisht  man. 

3.  He's  ta'en  the  first  sister  by  her  hand, 

And  he's  turned  her  round  and  made  her  stand. 

4.  « It's  whether  will  ye  be  a  rank  robber's  wife, 
Or  will  ye  die  by  my  wee  pen-knife  ?^^ 

5.  "It's  I'll  not  be  a  rank  robber's  wife, 

But  I'll  rather  die  by  your  wee  pen-knife!^* 

6.  He's  killed  this  may,  and  he's  laid  her  by. 
For  to  bear  the  red  rose  company. 

7.  He's  taken  the  second  ane  by  the  hand, 

And  he's  turned  her  round  and  made  her  stand. 

8.  <<It's  whether  will  ye  be  a  rank  robber's  wife, 
Or  will  ye  die  by  my  wee  pen-knife?** 

9.  « I'll  not  be  a  rank  robber's  wife, 

But  I'll  rather  die  by  your  wee  pen-knife.** 

10.  He's  killed  this  may,  and  he's  laid  her  by, 
For  to  bear  the  red  rose  company. 

11.  He's  taken  the  youngest  ane  by  the  hand. 

And  he's  turned  her  round  and  made  her  stand. 

12.  Says,  <'Will  ye  be  a  rank  robber's  wife, 
Or  will  ye  die  by  my  wee  pen-knife  }  ** 

13.  "I'll  not  be  a  rank  robber's  wife. 
Nor  will  I  die  by  your  wee  pen-knife. 

14.  "  For  I  hae  a  brother  in  this  wood. 
And  gin  ye  kill  me,  it's  he'll  kill  thee.** 

15.  "What's  thy  brother's  name?     Come  tell  to  me.*^ 
"My  brother's  name  is  Baby  Lon.** 


1340  THE   BALLAD 

16.  <<0  sister,  sister,  what  have  I  done! 
O  have  I  done  this  ill  to  thee ! 

17.  "O  since  I've  done  this  evil  deed, 
Good  sail  never  be  seen  o'  me.** 

r8.     He's  taken  out  his  wee  pen-knife. 

And  he's  twyned'  himsel  o'  his  own  sweet  life. 


■  c 


CHILDE   MAURICE^ 

HiLDE  Maiirice  huuted  i'  the  silver  wood, 
He  hunted  it  round  about, 
And  noebodye  that  he  found  therein, 
Nor  none  there  was  without. 


2.  He  says,  "  Come  hither,  thou  little  foot-page, 

That  runneth  lowlye  by  my  knee, 
For  thou  shalt  goe  to  John  Steward's  wife 
And  pray  her  speake  with  me. 

3.  « 

I,  and  greete  thou  doe  that  ladye  well. 
Ever  soe  well  fro  me. 

4.  "And,  as  it  falls,  as  many  times 

As  knots  beene  knit  on  a  kell,' 
Or  marchant  men  gone  to  leeve  London 
Either  to  buy  ware  or  sell. 

5.  "And,  as  it  falles,  as  many  times 

As  any  hart  can  thinke, 
Or  schoole-masters  are  in  any  schoole-house 

Writing  with  pen  and  inke : 
For  if  I  might,  as  well  as  she  may, 

This  night  I  would  with  her  speake. 

'  Parted,  deprived. 

*  It  is  worth  while  to  quote  Gray's  praise  of  this  ballad:  —  «I  have  got  the 
old  Scotch  ballad  on  which  <  Douglas  >  [the  well-known  tragedy  by  Home] 
was  founded.  It  is  divine.  .  .  .  Aristotle's  best  rules  are  observed  in  a 
manner  which  shows  the  author  never  had  heard  of  Aristotle. » —  Letter  to 
Mason,  in  <  Works, >  ed.  Gosse,  ii.  316. 

*  That  is,  the  page  is  to  greet  the  lady  as  many  times  as  there  are  knots 
in  nets  for  the  hair  {I'd/),  or  merchants  going  to  dear  {leeve,  lief)  London, 
or  thoughts  of  the  heart,  or  schoolmasters  in  all  schoolhouses.  These  multi- 
plied and  comparative  greetings  are  common  in  folk-lore,  particularly  in  Ger- 
man popular  lyric. 


THE  BALLAD  I341 

6.  **And  heere  I  send  her  a  mantle  of  greene. 

As  greene  as  any  grasse, 
And  bid  her  come  to  the  silver  wood, 
To  hunt  with  Child  Maurice. 

7.  "And  there  I  send  her  a  ring  of  gold, 

A  ring  of  precious  stone, 
And  bid  her  come  to  the  silver  wood, 
Let^  for  no  kind  of  man.** 

8.  One  while  this  little  boy  he  yode," 

Another  while  he  ran, 
Until  he  came  to  John  Steward's  hall, 
I- wis*  he  never  blan.* 

9.  And  of  nurture  the  child  had  good. 

He  ran  up  hall  and  bower  free, 
And  when  he  came  to  this  ladye  faire, 
Sayes,  "  God  you  save  and  see !  ^ 

10.  "I  am  come  from  Child  Maurice, 

A  message  unto  thee ; 
And  Child  Maurice,  he  greetes  you  well. 
And  ever  soe  well  from  me. 

11.  "And  as  it  falls,  as  oftentimes 

As  knots  beene  knit  on  a  kell. 
Or  marchant  men  gone  to  leeve  London 
Either  for  to  buy  ware  or  sell. 

12.  "And  as  oftentimes  he  greetes  you  well 

As  any  hart  can  thinke, 
Or  schoolemasters  are  in  any  schoole, 
Wryting  with  pen  and  inke. 

13.  "And  heere  he  sends  a  mantle  of  greene,^ 

As  gfreene  as  any  grasse. 
And  he  bids  you  come  to  the  silver  wood, 
To  hunt  with  Child  Maurice. 

14.  "  And  heere  he  sends  you  a  ring  of  gold, 

A  ring  of  the  precious  stone; 
He  prayes  you  to  come  to  the  silver  wood. 
Let  for  no  kind  of  man.** 

^  Let  (desist)  is  an  infinitive  depending  on  bid. 

8  Went,  walked.  ^  Certainly. 

*  Stopped.  '"  Protect. 

^  These,  of  course,  are  tokens  of  the  Childe's  identity. 


1342 


THE  BALLAD 

15.  <'Now  peace,  now  peace,  thou  little  foot-page, 

For  Christes  sake,   I  pray  thee! 
For  if  my  lord  hearc  one  of  these  words, 
Thou  must  be  hanged  hye !  >* 

16.  John  Steward  stood  under  the  castle  wall, 

And  he  wrote  the  words  everye  one, 


17.  And  he  called  upon  his  hors-keeper, 

"  Make  ready  you  my  steede !  >^ 

I,  and  soe  he  did  to  his  chambcrlaine, 

*^  Make  ready  thou  my  weede ! ' 

18.  And  he  cast  a  lease"  upon  his  backe, 

And  he  rode  to  the  silver  wood. 
And  there  he  sought  all  about. 
About  the  silver  wood. 

19.  And  there  he  found  him  Child  Maurice 

Sitting  upon  a  blocke, 
With  a  silver  combe  in  his  hand, 
Kembing  his  yellow  lockes. 


20.  But  then  stood  up  him  Child  Maurice, 

And  sayd  these  words  trulye : 
*I  doe  not  know  your  ladye,**  he  said, 
«If  that  I  doe  her  see.'* 

21.  He  sayes,  <<How  now,  how  now,  Child  Maurice? 

Alacke,  how  may  this  be  ? 
For  thou  hast  sent  her  love-tokens, 
More  now  then  two  or  three; 

22.  <<  For  thou  hast  sent  her  a  mantle  of  greene,. 

As  greene  as  any  grasse, 
And  bade  her  come  to  the  silver  woode 
To  hunt  with  Child  Maurice. 

23.  **  And  thou  hast  sent  her  a  ring  of  gold, 

A  ring  of  precj'ous  stone, 
And  bade  her  come  to  the  silver  wood. 
Let  for  no  kind  of  man. 

Clothes.  *  Leash. 


THE  BALLAD  1 343 

24.  *<And  by  my  faith,  now,  Child  Maurice, 

The  tone'  of  us  shall  dye!" 
<*Now  be  my  troth,"  sayd  Child  Maurice, 
«And  that  shall  not  be  L» 

25.  But  he  pulled  forth  a  bright  browne  *  sword, 

And  dryed  it  on  the  grasse, 
And  soe  fast  he  smote  at  John  Steward, 
I-wisse  he  never  did  rest. 

26.  Then  he  ^  pulled  forth  his  bright  browne  sword, 

And  dryed  it  on  his  sleeve, 
And  the  first  good  stroke  John  Stewart  stroke, 
Child  Maurice  head  he  did  cleeve. 

27.  And  he  pricked  it  on  his  sword's  poynt, 

Went  singing  there  beside, 
And  he  rode  till  he  came  to  that  ladye  faire. 
Whereas  this  ladye  lyed.* 

28.  And  sayes,  <<  Dost  thou  know  Child  Maurice  head, 

If  that  thou  dost  it  see  ? 
And  lap  it  soft,  and  kisse  it  oft. 

For  thou  lovedst  him  better  than  me.'^ 

29.  But  when  she  looked  on  Child  Maurice  head. 

She  never  spake  words  but  three:  — 
*I  never  beare  no  childe  but  one, 

And  you  have  slaine  him  trulye.^* 

30.  Sayes, ^  <^  Wicked  be  my  merrymen  all, 

I  gave  meate,  drinke,  and  clothe! 
But  could  they  not  have  holden  me 
When  I  was  in  all  that  wrath! 

31.  "For  I  have  slaine  one  of  the  curteousest  knights 

That  ever  bestrode  a  steed, 
So^  have  I  done  one  of  the  fairest  ladyes 
That  ever  ware  woman's  weede ! " 

That  one  =  the  one.  That  is  the  old  neuter  form  of  the  definite  article. 
Cf.  the  tot  her  for  that  other. 

"  Brown,  used  in  this  way,  seems  to  mean  burnished,  or  glistening,  and  is 
found  in  Anglo-Saxon. 

^  He,  John  Steward. 

♦Lived. 

^John  Steward. 

^Compare  the  similar  swiftness  of  tragic  development  in  <  Babylon.* 


92488 


12^^  THE  BALLAD 


THE  WIFE  OF  USHER'S  WELL 

1.  r-p\HERE  lived  a  wife  at  Usher's  Well, 

I  And  a  wealthy  wife  was  she ; 

She  had  three  stout  and  stalwart  sons, 
And  sent  them  o'er  the  sea. 

2.  They  hadna  been  a  week  from  her, 

A  week  but  barely  ane. 
When  word  came  to  the  carlin^  wife 
That  her  three  sons  were  gane. 

3.  They  hadna  been  a  week  from  her, 

A  week  but  barely  three, 
When  word  came  to  the  carlin  wife 
That  her  sons  she'd  never  see. 

4.  "  I  wish  the  wind  may  never  cease, 

Nor  fashes'^  in  the  flood. 
Till  my  three  sons  come  hame  to  me, 
In  earthly  flesh  and  blood.  *^ 

5.  It  fell  about  the  Martinmass,'' 

When  nights  are  lang  and  mirk. 

The  carlin  wife's  three  sons  came  hame, 

And  their  hats  were  o'  the  birk.* 

6.  It  neither  grew  in  syke*  nor  ditch, 

Nor  yet  in  ony  sheugh,^ 
But  at  the  gates  o'  Paradise, 
That  birk  grew  fair  eneugh. 


7.     "Blow  up  the  fire,  my  maidens! 
Bring  water  from  the  well ! 
For  a'  my  house  shall  feast  this  night, 
Since  my  three  sons  are  well.^> 

^  Old  woman. 

2  Lockhart's   clever  emendation    for    the  fishes   of  the   Ms.      Fashes  =  ^'£,- 
turbances,  storms. 

*  November  nth.     Another  version  gives  the  time  as  «the  hallow  days  of 
yule.» 

*  Birch. 
5  Mansh. 

8  Furrow,  ditch. 


THE   BALLAD  1345 

8.     And  she  has  made  to  them  a  bed, 
She's  made  it  large  and  wide, 
And  she's  ta'en  her  mantle  her  about, 
Sat  down  at  the  bed-side. 


9.     Up  then  crew  the  red,  red  cock,^ 
And  up  and  crew  the  gray; 
The  eldest  to  the  youngest  said, 
"  'Tis  time  we  were  away.^* 

10.  The  cock  he  hadna  craw'd  but  once, 

And  clapp'd  his  wing  at  a'. 
When  the  youngest  to  the  eldest  said, 
<<  Brother,  we  must  awa'. 

1 1.  "  The  cock  doth  craw,  the  day  doth  daw. 

The  channerin^  worm  doth  chide; 
Gin  we  be  mist  out  o'  our  place, 
A  sair  pain  we  maun  bide. 

12.  ^*  Fare  ye  weel,  my  mother  dear! 

Fareweel  to  barn  and  byre ! 
And  fare  ye  weel,  the  bonny  lass 
That  kindles  my  mother's  fire !  *^ 


SWEET  WILLIAM'S   GHOST 

1.  T  T  THAN  bells  war  rung,  an  mass  was  sung, 

Y  Y         A  wat*  a'  man  to  bed  were  gone, 

Clark  Sanders  came  to  Margret's  window, 
With  mony  a  sad  sigh  and  groan. 

2.  ®Are  ye  sleeping,  Margret,^^  he  says, 

^*  Or  are  ye  waking,  presentlie  .'' 
Give  me  my  faith  and  trouth  again, 
A  wat,  true-love,  I  gied  to  thee.'^ 

'  In  folk-lore,  the  break  of  day  is  announced  to  demons  and  ghosts  by 
three  cocks, — usually  a  white,  a  red,  and  a  black;  but  the  colors,  and  even 
the  numbers,  vary.  At  the  third  crow,  the  ghosts  must  vanish.  This  applies 
to  guilty  and  innocent  alike ;    of  course,  the  sons  are  «  spirits  of  health.  >* 

'  Fretting. 

»  « I  wot, »  «  I  know,»  =  truly,  in  sooth.     The  same  in  5  ^  6  *,    7  *  8  ^ 

I"— 85  .  . 


1346 


THE  BALLAD 

3.  «  Your  faith  and  trouth  ye's  never  get, 

Nor  our  true  love  shall  never  twin,' 
Till  ye  come  with  me  in  my  bower, 
And  kiss  me  both  cheek  and  chin.** 

4.  "My  mouth  it  is  full  cold,   Margret, 

It  has  the  smell  now  of  the  ground; 
And  if  I  kiss  thy  comely  mouth. 
Thy  life-days  will  not  be  long. 

5.  "Cocks  are  crowing  a  merry  mid-larf,* 

I  wat  the  wild  fule  boded  day; 
Give  me  my  faith  and  trouth  again. 
And  let  me  fare  me  on  my  way.** 

6.  "Thy  faith  and  trouth  thou  shall  na  get, 

Nor  our  true  love  shall  never  twin, 
"Till  ye  tell  me  what  comes  of  women 
A  wat  that  dy's  in  strong  traveling.**' 

7.  "  Their  beds  are  made  in  the  heavens  high, 

Down  at  the  foot  of  our  good  Lord's  knee, 
Well  set  about  wi'  gilly-flowers, 

A  wat  sweet  company  for  to  see. 

8.  "  O  cocks  are  crowing  a  merry  mid-larf, 

A  wat  the  wild  fule  boded  day; 
The  salms  of  Heaven  will  be  sung, 
And  ere  now  I'll  be  missed  away,** 

9.  Up  she  has  taen  a  bright  long  wand. 

And  she  has  straked  her  trouth  thereon;* 
She  has  given  it  him  out  at  the  shot-window, 
Wi  mony  a  sad  sigh  and  heavy  groan. 

10.     "I  thank  you,   Margret,   I  thank  you,  Margret, 
And  I  thank  you  heartilie; 
Gin  ever  the  dead  come  for  the  quick. 

Be  sure,  Margret,  I'll  come  again  for  thee.** 

'  Part,  separate.     She  does  not  yet  know  he  is  dead. 

'  Probably  the  distorted  name  of  a  town ;  «  =  in.  "  Cocks  are  crowing  in 
merry ,  and  the  wild-fowl  announce  the  dawn.» 

s  That  die  in  childbirth. 

*Margaret  thus  gives  him  back  his  troth-plight  by  " stroking'*  it  upon  the 
wand,  much  as  savages  and  peasants  believe  they  can  rid  themvSelves  of  a 
disease  by  rubbing  the  affected  part  with  a  stick  or  pebble  and  flinging  the 
latter  into  the  road. 


THE  BALLAD  1 347 

11.  It's  hose  and  shoon  an  goiind^  alane 

She  clame  the  wall  and  followed  him, 
Until  she  came  to  a  green  forest, 
On  this  she  lost  the  sight  of  him. 

12.  <*  Is  there  any  room  at  your  head,  Sanders  ? 

Is  there  any  room  at  your  feet  ? 
Or  any  room  at  yotir  twa  sides  ? 
Where  fain,  fain  woud  I  sleep.  ^* 

13.  "There  is  nae  room  at  my  head,  Margret, 

There  is  nae  room  at  my  feet; 
There  is  room  at  my  twa  sides, 
For  ladys  for  to  sleep. 

14.  "Cold  meaP  is  my  covering  owre, 

But  an '  my  winding  sheet : 
My  bed  it  is  full  low,  I  say. 

Among  hungry  worms  I  sleep. 

15.  "Cold  meal  is  my  covering  owre, 

But  an  my  winding  sheet: 
The  dew  it  falls  nae  sooner  down 
Than  ay  it  is  full  weet.* 


'  Gown. 

*  Mold,  earth. 
^  But  aud  =  also. 


1348 


HONORfe   DE   BALZAC 

(1 799-1 850) 
BY   WILLIAM   P.  TRENT 

loNOR^  DE  Balzac,  by  common  consent  the  ^eatest  of  French 
novelists  and  to  many  of  his  admirers  the  greatest  of  all 
writers  of  prose  fiction,  was  born  at  Tours,  May  i6th,  1799. 
Neither  his  family  nor  his  place  of  birth  counts  for  much  in  his  artis- 
tic development;  but  his  sister  Laure,  afterwards  Madame  Surville,— 
to  whom  we  owe  a  charming  sketch  of  her  brother  and  many  of  his 
most  delightful  letters, — made  him  her  hero  through  life,  and  gave 
him  a  sympathy  that  was  better  than  any  merely  literary  environ- 
ment. He  was  a  sensitive  child,  little  comprehended  by  his  parents 
or  teachers,  which  probably  accounts  for  the  fact  that  few  writers 
have  so  well  described  the  feelings  of  children  so  situated  [See  *■  Le 
lys  dans  la  vallee '  (The  Lily  in  the  Valley)  and  < Louis  Lambert^]. 
He  was  not  a  good  student,  but  undermined  his  health  by  desultory 
though  enormous  reading  and  by  writing  a  precocious  Treatise  on  the 
Will,  which  an  irate  master  burned  and  the  future  novelist  after- 
wards naively  deplored.  When  brought  home  to  recuperate,  he  turned 
from  books  to  nature,  and  the  effects  of  the  beautiful  landscape  of 
Touraine  upon  his  imagination  are  to  be  found  throughout  his  writ- 
ings, in  passages  of  description  worthy  of  a  nature-worshiper  like 
Senancour  himself.  About  this  time  a  vague  desire  for  fame  seems 
to  have  seized  him, —  a  desire  destined  to  grow  into  an  almost  mor- 
bid passion;  and  it  was  a  kindly  Providence  that  soon  after  (18 14) 
led  his  family  to  quit  the  stagnant  provinces  for  that  nursery  of 
ambition,  Paris.  Here  he  studied  under  new  masters,  heard  lectures 
at  the  Sorbonne,  read  in  the  libraries,  and  finally,  at  the  desire  of 
his  practical  father,  took  a  three  years'  course  in  law. 

He  was  now  at  the  parting  of  the  ways,  and  he  chose  the  one 
nearest  his  heart.  After  much  discussion,  it  was  settled  that  he 
should  not  be  obliged  to  return  to  the  provinces  with  his  family,  or 
to  enter  upon  the  regular  practice  of  law,  but  that  he  might  try  his 
luck  as  a  writer  on  an  allowance  purposely  fixed  low  enough  to  test 
his  constancy  and  endurance.  Two  years  was  the  period  of  probation 
allotted,  during  which  time  Balzac  read  still  more  widely  and  walked 
the  streets  studying  the  characters  he  met,  all  the  while  endeavoring 
to  grind  out  verses  for  a  tragedy  on  Cromwell.  This,  when  com- 
pleted, was  promptly  and  justly  damned  by  his  family,  and  he  was 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC 


1349 


temporarily  forced  to  retire  from  Paris.  He  did  not  give  up  his 
aspirations,  however,  and  before  long  he  was  back  in  his  attic,  this 
time  supporting  himself  by  his  pen.  Novels,  not  tragedies,  were 
what  the  public  most  wanted,  so  he  labored  indefatigably  to  supply 
their  needs  and  his  own  necessities;  not  relinquishing,  however,  the 
hope  that  he  might  some  day  watch  the  performance  of  one  of  his 
own  plays.  His  perseverance  was  destined  to  be  rewarded,  for  he 
lived  to  write  five  dramas  which  fill  a  volume  of  his  collected 
works;  but  only  one,  the  posthumous  comedy  <Mercadet,>  was  even 
fairly  successful.  Yet  that  Balzac  had  dramatic  genius  his  matured 
novels  abundantly  prove. 

The  ten  romances,  however,  that  he  wrote  for  cheap  booksellers 
between  1822  and  1829  displayed  so  little  genius  of  any  sort  that  he 
was  afterwards  unwilling  to  cover  their  deficiencies  with  his  great 
name.  They  have  been  collected  as  youthful  works  (<CEuvres  de 
jeunesse  >),  and  are  useful  to  a  complete  understanding  of  the  evolu- 
tion of  their  author's  genius;  but  they  are  rarely  read  even  by  his 
most  devoted  admirers.  They  served,  however,  to  enable  him  to  get 
through  his  long  and  heart-rending  period  of  apprenticeship,  and  they 
taught  him  how  to  express  himself;  for  this  born  novelist  was  not  a 
born  writer  and  had  to  labor  painfully  to  acquire  a  style  which  only 
at  rare  moments  quite  fitted  itself  to  the  subject  he  had  in  hand. 

Much  more  interesting  than  these  early  sensational  romances  were 
the  letters  he  wrote  to  his  sister  Laure,  in  which  he  grew  eloquent 
over  his  ambition  and  gave  himself  needed  practice  in  describ- 
ing the  characters  with  whom  he  came  in  contact.  But  he  had  not 
the  means  to  wait  quietly  and  ripen,  so  he  embarked  in  a  publish- 
ing business  which  brought  him  into  debt.  Then,  to  make  up  his 
losses,  he  became  partner  in  a  printing  enterprise  which  failed  in 
1827,  leaving  him  still  more  embarrassed  financially,  but  endowed 
with  a  fund  of  experience  which  he  turned  to  rich  account  as  a  nov- 
elist. Henceforth  the  sordid  world  of  debt,  bankruptcy,  usury,  and 
speculation  had  no  mystery  for  him,  and  he  laid  it  bare  in  novel 
after  novel,  utilizing  also  the  knowledge  he  had  gained  of  the  law, 
and  even  pressing  into  service  the  technicalities  of  the  printing  office 
[See  <  Illusions  perdues  >  (Lost  Illusions)].  But  now  at  the  age  of 
twenty-eight  he  had  over  100,000  francs  to  pay,  and  had  written 
nothing  better  than  some  cheap  stories;  the  task  of  wiping  out  his 
debts  by  his  writings  seemed  therefore  a  more  hopeless  one  than 
Scott's.  Nothing  daunted,  however,  he  set  to  work,  and  the  year 
that  followed  his  second  failure  in  business  saw  the  composition  of 
the  first  novel  he  was  willing  to  acknowledge,  <  Les  Chouans.*  This 
romance  of  Brittany  in  1799  deserved  the  praise  it  received  from 
press    and    public,   in  spite  of  its  badly   jointed   plot   and   overdrawn 


1350  HONORfi   DE   BALZAC 

characters.  It  still  appeals  to  many  readers,  and  is  important  to  the 
*Comedie  humaine  '  as  being  the  only  novel  of  the  "Military  Scenes." 
The  *  Physiology  of  Marriage*  followed  quickly  (1829-30),  and  despite 
a  certain  pruriency  of  imagination,  displayed  considerable  powers  of 
analysis,  powers  destined  shortly  to  distinguish  a  story  which  ranks 
high  among  its  author's  works,  *■  La  Maison  du  chat-qui-pelote  * 
(1830).  This  delightful  novelette,  the  queer  title  of  which  is  nearly 
equivalent  to  <  At  the  Sign  of  the  Cat  and  the  Racket,*  showed  in 
its  treatment  of  the  heroine's  unhappy  passion  the  intuition  and  pen- 
etration of  the  born  psychologist,  and  in  its  admirable  description  of 
bourgeois  life  the  pictorial  genius  of  the  genuine  realist.  In  other 
words  the  youthful  romancer  was  merged  once  for  all  in  the  matured 
novelist.  The  years  of  waiting  and  observation  had  done  their  work, 
and  along  the  streets  of  Paris  now  walked  the  most  profound  analyst 
of  human  character  that  had  scrutinized  society  since  the  days  when 
William  Shakespeare,  fresh  from  Stratford,  trod  the  streets  and  lanes 
of  Elizabethan  London. 

The  year  1830  marks  the  beginning  not  merely  of  Balzac's  success 
as  the  greatest  of  modern  realists,  but  also  of  his  marvelous  literary 
activity.  Novel  after  novel  is  begun  before  its  predecessor  is  finished; 
short  stories  of  almost  perfect  workmanship  are  completed;  sketches 
are  dashed  off  that  will  one  day  find  their  appropriate  place  in  larger 
compositions,  as  yet  existing  only  in  the  brain  of  the  master.  Nor  is 
it  merely  a  question  of  individual  works:  novels  and  stories  are  to 
form  different  series, — < Scenes  from  Private  Life,*  < Philosophical 
Novels  and  Tales,* — which  are  themselves  destined  to  merge  into 
< Studies  of  Manners  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,*  and  finally  into  the 
*  Comedie  humaine  *  itself.  Yet  it  was  more  than  a  swarm  of  stories 
that  was  buzzing  in  his  head;  it  was  a  swarm  of  individuals  often 
more  truly  alive  to  him  than  the  friends  with  whom  he  loved  to  con- 
verse about  them.  And  just  because  he  knew  these  people  of  his 
brain,  just  because  he  entered  into  the  least  details  of  their  daily 
lives,  Balzac  was  destined  to  become  much  more  than  a  mere  philos- 
opher or  student  of  society;  to  wit,  a  creator  of  characters,  endowed 
with  that  "  absolute  dramatic  vision  **  which  distinguishes  Homer  and 
Shakespeare  and  Chaucer.  But  because  he  was  also  something  of  a 
philosopher  and  student  of  sociology,  he  conceived  the  stupendous 
idea  of  linking  these  characters  with  one  another  and  with  their 
several  environments,  in  order  that  he  might  make  himself  not 
merely  the  historian  but  also  the  creator  of  an  entire  society.  In 
other  words,  conservative  though  he  was,  Balzac  had  the  audacity  to 
range  himself  by  the  side  of  Geoffrey  Saint-Hilaire,  and  to  espouse 
the  cause  of  evolution  even  in  its  infancy.  The  great  ideas  of  the 
mutability  of  species  and  of  the  influence  of  environment  and  heredity 


HONORfi  DE  BALZAC  1251 

were,  he  thought,  as  applicable  to  sociology  as  to  zoology,  and  as 
applicable  to  fiction  as  to  either.  So  he  meditated  the  <Comedie 
humaine  *  for  several  years  before  he  announced  it  in  1842,  and  from 
being  almost  the  rival  of  Saint-Hilaire  he  became  almost  the  antici- 
pator of  Darwin. 

But  this  idea  of  evolution  was  itself  due  to  the  evolution  of  his 
genius,  to  which  many  various  elements  contributed:  his  friendships 
and  enmities  with  contemporary  authors,  his  intimacies  with  women 
of  refinement  and  fashion,  his  business  struggles  with  creditors  and 
publishers,  his  frequent  journeys  to  the  provinces  and  foreign  coun- 
tries; and  finally  his  grandiose  schemes  to  surround  himself  with 
luxury  and  the  paraphernalia  of  power,  not  so  much  for  his  own  sake 
as  for  the  sake  of  her  whose  least  smile  was  a  delight  and  an  inspira- 
tion. About  each  of  these  topics  an  interesting  chapter  might  be 
written,  but  here  a  few  words  must  suffice. 

After  his  position  as  an  author  was  more  or  less  assured,  Balzac's 
relations  with  the  leaders  of  his  craft  —  such  as  Victor  Hugo,  Theo- 
phile  Gautier,  and  George  Sand  —  were  on  the  whole  cordial.  He 
had  trouble  with  Sainte-Beuve,  however,  and  often  felt  that  his 
brother-writers  begrudged  his  success.  His  constant  attacks  on  con- 
temporary journalists,  and  his  egotistic  and  erratic  manners  naturally 
prejudiced  the  critics,  so  that  even  the  marvelous  romance  entitled 
*  La  Peau  de  chag^rin^  (The  Magic  Skin:  1831), — a  work  of  superb 
genius, — speedily  followed  as  it  was  by  <  Eugenie  Grandet^  and  ^  Le 
Pere  Goriot,'  did  not  win  him  cordial  recognition.  One  or  two  of 
his  friendships,  however,  gave  him  a  knowledge  of  higher  social 
circles  than  he  was  by  birth  entitled  to,  a  fact  which  should  be 
remembered  in  face  of  the  charge  that  he  did  not  know  high 
life,  although  it  is  of  course  true  that  a  writer  like  Balzac,  possessing 
the  intuition  of  genius,  need  not  frequent  salons  or  live  in  hovels  in 
order  to  describe  them  with  absolute  verisimilitude. 

With  regard  to  Balzac's  debts,  the  fact  should  be  noted  that  he 
might  have  paid  them  off  more  easily  and  speedily  had  he  been 
more  prudent.  He  cut  into  the  profits  of  his  books  by  the  costly 
changes  he  was  always  making  in  his  proof-sheets,  —  changes  which 
the  artist  felt  to  be  necessary,  but  against  which  the  publishers  nat- 
urally protested.  In  reality  he  wrote  his  books  on  his  proof-sheets, 
for  he  would  cut  and  hack  the  original  version  and  make  new  inser- 
tions until  he  drove  his  printers  wild.  Indeed,  composition  never 
became  easy  to  him,  although  under  a  sudden  inspiration  he  could 
sometimes  dash  off  page  after  page  while  other  men  slept.  He  had, 
too,  his  affectations;  he  must  even  have  a  special  and  peculiar  garb 
in  which  to  write.  All  these  eccentricities  and  his  outside  distractions 
and   ambitions,  as  well  as  his  noble  and  pathetic  love  affair,  entered 


1352 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC 


into  the  warp  and  woof  of  his  work  with  effects  that  can  easily  be 
detected  by  the  careful  student,  who  should  remember,  however, 
that  the  master's  foibles  and  peculiarities  never  for  one  moment  set 
him  outside  the  small  circle  of  the  men  of  supreme  genius.  He 
belongs  to  them  by  virtue  of  his  tremendous  grasp  of  life  in  its 
totality,  his  superhuman  force  of  execution,  and  the  inevitableness  of 
his  art  at  its  best. 

The  decade  from  1830  to  1840  is  the  most  prolific  period  of  Bal- 
zac's genius  in  the  creation  of  individual  works;  that  from  1840  to 
1850  is  his  great  period  of  philosophical  co-ordination  and  arrange- 
ment. In  the  first  he  hewed  out  materials  for  his  house;  in  the 
second  he  put  them  together.  This  statement  is  of  course  relatively 
true  only,  for  we  owe  to  the  second  decade  three  of  his  greatest 
masterpieces:  <  Splendeurs  et  miseres  des  courtisanes, *  and  <La  Cousine 
Bette^  and  <  Le  Cousin  Pons,'  collectively  known  as  <  Les  Parents 
pauvres '  (Poor  Relations).  And  what  a  period  of  masterful  literary 
activity  the  first  decade  presents!  For  the  year  1830  alone  the 
Vicomte  de  Spoelberch  de  Lovenjoul  gives  seventy-one  entries,  many 
of  slight  importance,  but  some  familiar  to  every  student  of  modern 
literature,  such  as  ^El  Verdugo,'  ^  La  Maison  du  chat-qui-pelote,* 
<Gobseck,*  < Adieu,*  ^Une  Passion  dans  le  desert'  (A  Passion  in  the 
Desert),  <Un  Episode  sous  la  Terreur'  (An  Episode  of  the  Terror). 
For  1 83 1  there  are  seventy-six  entries,  among  them  such  masterpieces 
as  ^  Le  Requisitionnaire '  (The  Conscript),  <  Les  Proscrits '  (The  Out- 
laws), *La  Peau  de  chagrin,'  and  <  Jesus-Christ  en  Flandre.'  In  1832 
the  number  of  entries  falls  to  thirty-six,  but  among  them  are  <  Le  Colo- 
nel Chabert,'  <  Le  Cure  de  Tours'  (The  Priest  of  Tours),  ^  La  Grande 
Breteche,'  <  Louis  Lambert,'  and  <Les  Marana.'  After  this  year  there 
are  fewer  short  stories.  In  1833  we  have  ^  Le  Medecin  de  campagne' 
(The  Country  Doctor),  and  <  Eugenie  Grandet,'  with  parts  of  the 
^Histoire  des  treize '  (Story  of  the  Thirteen),  and  of  the  <Contes 
drolatiques'  (Droll  Tales).  The  next  year  gives  us  <La  Recherche 
de  I'absolu '  (Search  for  the  Absolute)  and  <  Le  Pere  Goriot '  (Old 
Goriot)  and  during  the  next  six  there  were  no  less  than  a  dozen 
masterpieces.  Such  a  decade  of  accomplishment  is  little  short  of 
miraculotis,  and  the  work  was  done  under  stress  of  anxieties  that 
would  have  crushed  any  normal  man. 

But  anxieties  and  labors  were  lightened  by  a  friendship  which 
was  an  inspiration  long  before  it  ripened  into  love,  and  were  rendered 
bearable  both  by  Balzac's  confidence  in  himself  and  by  his  ever 
nearer  view  of  the  goal  he  had  set  himself.  The  task  before  him  was 
as  stupendous  as  that  which  Comte  had  undertaken,  and  required  not 
merely  the  planning  and  writinc  of  new  works  but  the  utilization  of 
^U  that  he  had  previously  written.     Untiring  labor  had  to  be  devoted 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC  1^53 

to  this  manipulation  of  old  material,  for  practically  the  great  output 
of  the  five  years  1 829-1 834  was  to  be  co-ordinated  internally,  story 
being  brought  into  relation  with  story  and  character  with  character. 
This  meant  the  creation  and  management  of  an  immense  number  of 
personages,  the  careful  investigation  of  the  various  localities  which 
served  for  environments,  and  the  profound  study  of  complicated 
social  and  political  problems.  No  wonder,  then,  that  the  second 
decade  of  his  maturity  shows  a  falling  oflE  in  abundance,  though  not 
in  intensity  of  creative  power:  and  that  the  gradual  breaking  down 
of  his  health,  under  the  strain  of  his  ceaseless  efforts  and  of  his 
abnormal  habits  of  life,  made  itself  more  and  more  felt  in  the  years 
that  followed  the  great  preface  which  in  1842  set  forth  the  splendid 
design  of  the  ^  Comedie  humaine.^ 

This  preface,  one  of  the  most  important  documents  in  literary 
history,  must  be  carefully  studied  by  all  who  would  comprehend 
Balzac  in  his  entirety.  It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  that  Balzac's 
scientific  and  historical  aspirations  are  important  only  in  so  far  as 
they  caused  him  to  take  a  great  step  forward  in  the  development  of 
his  art.  The  nearer  the  artist  comes  to  reproducing  for  us  life  in  its 
totality,  the  higher  the  rank  we  assign  him  among  his  fellows. 
Tried  by  this  canon,  Balzac  is  supreme.  His  interweaving  of  charac- 
ters and  events  through  a  series  of  volumes  gives  a  verisimilitude  to 
his  work  unrivaled  in  prose  fiction,  and  paralleled  only  in  the  work 
of  the  world-poets.  In  other  words,  his  use  of  co-ordination  upon  a 
vast  scale  makes  up  for  his  lack  of  delicacy  and  sureness  of  touch, 
as  compared  with  what  Shakespeare  and  Homer  and  Chaucer  have 
taught  us  to  look  for.     Hence  he  is  with  them  even  if  not  of  them. 

This  great  claim  can  be  made  for  the  Balzac  of  the  *  Comedie 
humaine  ^  only ;  it  could  not  be  made  for  the  Balzac  of  any  one  mas- 
terpiece like  *Le  Pere  Goriot,^  or  even  for  the  Balzac  of  all  the 
masterpieces  taken  in  lump  and  without  co-ordination.  Balzac  by 
co-ordination  has  in  spite  of  his  limitations  given  us  a  world,  just  as 
Shakespeare  and  Homer  have  done ;  and  so  Taine  was  profoundly 
right  when  he  put  him  in  the  same  category  with  the  greatest  of  all 
writers.  When,  however,  he  added  St.  Simon  to  Shakespeare,  and 
proclaimed  that  with  them  Balzac  was  the  greatest  storehouse  of  doc- 
uments that  we  have  on  human  nature,  he  was  guilty  not  merely  of 
confounding  genres  of  art,  but  also  of  laying  stress  on  the  philosophic 
rather  than  on  the  artistic  side  of  fiction.  Balzac  does  make  himself 
a  great  storehouse  of  documents  on  human  nature,  but  he  also  does 
something  far  more  important,  he  sets  before  us  a  world  of  living 
men  and  women. 

To  have  brought  this  world  into  existence,  to  have  given  it  order 
in  the  midst  of   complexity,  and  that  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  death 


1354  HONORS   DE   BALZAC 

overtook  him  before  he  could  complete  his  work,  would  have  been 
sufficient  to  occupy  a  decade  of  any  other  man's  life;  but  he,  though 
harassed  with  illness  and  with  hopes  of  love  and  ambition  deferred, 
was  strong  enough  to  do  more.  The  year  1840  saw  the  appearance 
of  <  Pierrette,'  and  the  establishment  of  the  ill-fated  *  Revue  parisi- 
enne.*  The  following  year  saw  <  Ursule  Mirouet,'  and  until  1848  the 
stream  of  great  works  is  practically  imbroken.  The  <  Splendeurs  et 
miseres*  and  the  ^Parents  pauvres'  have  been  named  already,  but 
to  these  must  be  added  *Un  Menage  de  gargon*  (A  Bachelor's  House- 
keeping), ^Modeste  Mignon,' and  ^  Les  Paysans*  (The  Peasants).  The 
three  following  years  added  nothing  to  his  work  and  closed  his  life, 
but  they  brought  him  his  crowning  happiness.  On  March  14th,  1850, 
he  was  married  to  Mme.  Hanska,  at  Berditchef ;  on  August  i8th,  1850, 
he  died  at  Paris. 

Madame  Evelina  de  Hanska  came  into  Balzac's  life  about  1833,  just 
after  he  had  shaken  off  the  unfortunate  influence  of  the  Duchesse 
de  Castries.  The  young  Polish  cottntess  was  much  impressed,  we 
are  told,  by  reading  the  *■  Scenes  de  la  vie  privee '  (Scenes  of  Private 
Life),  and  was  somewhat  perplexed  and  worried  by  Balzac's  appar- 
ent change  of  method  in  ^  La  Peau  de  chagrin.'  She  wrote  to  him 
over  the  signature  <^  L'Etrangere ''  (A  Foreigner),  and  he  answered 
in  a  series  of  letters  recently  published  in  the  Revue  de  Paris. 
Not  long  after  the  opening  of  this  correspondence  the  two  met,  and 
a  firm  friendship  was  cemented  between  them.  The  lady  was  about 
thirty,  and  married  to  a  Russian  gentleman  of  large  fortune,  to 
whom  she  had  given  an  only  daughter.  She  was  in  the  habit  of 
traveling  about  Europe  to  carry  on  this  daughter's  education,  and 
Balzac  made  it  his  pleasure  and  duty  to  see  her  whenever  he  could, 
sometimes  journeying  as  far  as  Vienna.  In  the  interim  he  would 
write  her  letters  which  possess  great  charm  and  importance  to  the 
student  of  his  life.  The  husband  made  no  objection  to  the  intimacy, 
trusting  both  to  his  wife  and  to  Balzac;  but  for  some  time  before 
the  death  of  the  aged  nobleman,  Balzac  seems  to  have  distrusted 
himself  and  to  have  held  slightly  aloof  from  the  woman  whom  he 
was  destined  finally  to  love  with  all  the  fervor  of  his  nature.  Madame 
Hanska  became  free  in  the  winter  of  1842-3,  and  the  next  summer 
Balzac,  visited  St.  Petersburg  to  see  her.  His  love  soon  became  an 
absorbing  passion,  but  consideration  for  her  daughter's  future  with- 
held the  lady's  consent  to  a  betrothal  till  1846.  It  was  a  period  of 
weary  waiting,  in  which  our  sympathies  are  all  on  one  side;  for  if 
ever  a  man  deserved  to  be  happy  in  a  woman's  love,  it  was  Balzac. 
His  happiness  came,  but  almost  too  late  to  be  enjoyed.  His  last 
two  years,  which  he  spent  in  Poland  with  Madame  de  Hanska,  were 
oppressed  by  illness,  and  he  returned  to  his  beloved  Paris  only  to  die. 


HONORE   DE  BALZAC  13^5 

The  struggle  of  thirty  years  was  over,  and  although  his  immense 
genius  was  not  yet  fully  recognized,  his  gfreatest  contemporary, 
Victor  Hugo,  was  magnanimous  enough  to  exclaim  on  hearing  that 
he  was  dying,  <<  Europe  is  on  the  point  of  losing  a  great  mind.^* 
Balzac's  disciples  feel  that  Europe  really  lost  its  greatest  writer  since 
Shakespeare. 

In  the  definitive  edition  of  Balzac's  writings  in  twenty-four  vol- 
umes, seventeen  are  occupied  by  the  various  divisions  of  the  *■  Comedie 
humaine.^  The  plays  take  up  one  volume;  and  the  correspondence, 
not   including   of    course    the   letters   to   <<  L'Etrangere,^*  another;    the 

*  Contes  drolatiques  ^  make  still  another ;  and  finally  we  have  four 
volumes  filled  with  sketches,  tales,  reviews,  and  historical  and  polit- 
ical articles  left  uncollected  by  their  author. 

The  <  Contes^  are  thirty  in  number,  divided  into  "dixains,^^  each 
with  its  appropriate  prologue  and  epilogue.  They  purport  to  have 
been  collected  in  the  abbeys  of  Touraine,  and  set  forth, by  the  Sieur 
de  Balzac  for  the  delight  of  Pantagruelists  and  none  others.  Not 
merely  the  spirit  but  the  very  language  of  Rabelais  is  caught  with 
remarkable  verve  and  fidelity,  so  that  from  the  point  of  view  of  style 
Balzac  has  never  done  better  work.  A  book  which  holds  by  Rabelais 
on  the  one  hand  and  by  the  Qtieen  of  Navarre  on  the  other  is  not 
likely,  however,  to  appeal  to  that  part  of  the  English  and  American 
reading  public  that  expurgates  its  Chaucer,  and  blushes  at  the  men- 
tion of  Fielding  and  Smollett.     Such  readers  will  do  well  to  avoid  the 

*  Contes  drolatiques;'  although,  like  <  Don  Juan,'  they  contain  a  great 
deal  of  what  was  best  in  their  author, —  of  his  frank,  ebullient,  sens- 
uous nature,  lighted  up  here  at  least  by  a  genuine  if  scarcely  deli- 
cate humor.  Of  direct  suggestion  of  vice  Balzac  was,  naturally,  as 
incapable  as  he  was  of  smug  puritanism ;  but  it  must  be  confessed 
that  as  a  raconteur  his  proper  audience,  now  that  the  monastic  orders 
have  passed  away,  would  be  a  group  of  middle-aged  club-men. 

The  ^  Comedie  humaine '  is  divided  into  three  main  sections :  first 
and  most  important,  the  <  Etudes  de  moeurs*  (Studies  of  Manners), 
second  the  ^  Etudes  philosophiques '  (Philosophic  Studies),  and  finally 
the  ^Etudes  analytiques'  (Analytic  Studies).  These  divisions,  as  M. 
Barriere  points  out  in  his  <  L'CEuvre  de  H.  de  Balzac '  (The  Work 
of  Balzac),  were  intended  to  bear  to  one  another  the  relations  that 
moral  science,  psychology,  and  metaphysics  do  to  one  another  with 
regard  to  the  life  of  man,  whether  as  an  individual  or  as  a  member 
of  society.  No  single  division  was  left  complete  at  the  author's 
death;  but  enough  was  finished  and  put  together  to  give  us  the  sense 
of  moving  in  a  living,  breathing  world,  no  matter  where  we  make 
our  entry.  This,  as  we  have  insisted,  is  the  real  secret  of  his  great- 
ness.    To  think,  for  example,  that  the  importance  of  <  Seraphita '  lies 


1356  HONORE   DE   BALZAC 

in  the  fact  that  it  gives  Balzac's  view  of  Swedenborgianism,  or  that 
the  importance  of  *  Louis  Lambert  *  lies  in  its  author's  queer  theories 
about  the  human  will,  is  entirely  to  misapprehend  his  true  position 
in  the  world  of  literature.  His  mysticism,  his  psychology,  his  theories 
of  economics,  his  reactionary  devotion  to  monarchy,  and  his  idealiza- 
tion of  the  Church  of  Rome,,  may  or  may  not  appeal  to  us,  and  have 
certainly  nothing  that  is  eternal  or  inevitable  about  them;  but  in  his 
knowledge  of  the  human  mind  and  heart  he  is  as  inevitable  and 
eternal  as  any  writer  has  ever  been,  save  only  Shakespeare  and 
Homer. 

The    *  Etudes    de    moeurs  >    were    systematically    divided    by    their 
author   into    <  Scenes    of    Private    Life,>    <  Scenes    of    Provincial    Life,* 

<  Scenes  of  Country  Life,*  <  Scenes  of  Parisian  Life,*  <  Scenes  of  Politi- 
cal Life,*  and  <  Scenes  of  Military  Life,'  —  the  last  three  divisions  rep- 
resenting more  or  less  exceptional  phases  of  existence.  The  group 
relating  to  Paris  is  by  far  the  most  important  and  powerful,  but 
the  provincial  stories  show  almost  as  fine  workmanship,  and  furnish 
not  a  few  of  the  well-known  masterpieces.  Less  interesting,  though 
still  important,  are  the  < Scenes  of  Private  Life,*  which  consist  of 
twenty-four  novels,  novelettes,  and  tales,  under  the  following  titles: 
*  Beatrix,*  <  Albert  Savarus,*  <  La  Fausse  maitresse  *  (The  False  Mis- 
tress), <Le  Message*  (The  Message),  <  La  Grande  Breteche,*  <  Etude 
de  femme  *  (Study  of  Woman),  <  Autre  etude  de  femme  *  (Another 
Study  of  Woman),  <  Madame  Firmiani,*  <Modeste  Mignon,*  <  Un  Debut 
dans  la  vie*  (An  Entrance  upon  Life),  < Pierre  Grassou,*  <Memoires 
de  deux  jeunes  mariees*  (Recollections  of  a  Young  Couple),  ^  La 
Maison  du  chat-qui-pelote,*  <  Le  Bal  de  Sceaux*  (The  Ball  of  Sceaux), 
*Le    Contrat    de   mariage*  (The    Marriage    Contract),    ^  La   Vendetta,* 

<  La  Paix  du  menage  *  (Household  Peace),  <  Une  Double  famille  *  (A 
Double  Family),  <  Une  Fille  d'Eve  *  (A  Daughter  of  Eve),  ^Honorine,* 
*La  Femme  abandonnee  *  (The  Abandoned  Wife),  <  La  Grenadiere,* 
<La  Femme  de  trente  ans*  (The  Woman  of  Thirty). 

Of  all  these  stories,  hardly  one  shows  genuine  greatness  except  the 
powerful  tragic  tale  *  La  Grande  Breteche,*  which  was  subsequently 
incorporated  in  <  Autre  etude  de  femme.*  This  story  of  a  jealous  hus- 
band's walling  up  his  wife's  lover  in  a  closet  of  her  chamber  is  as 
dramatic  a  piece  of  writing  as  Balzac  ever  did,  and  is  almost  if  not 
quite  as  perfect  a  short  story  as  any  that  has  since  been  written  in 
France.  *  La  Maison  du  chat-qui-pelote  *  has  been  mentioned  already 
on  account  of  its  importance  in  the  evolution  of  Balzac's  realism,  but 
while  a  delightful  novelette,  it  is  hardly  great,  its  charm  coming 
rather  from  its  descriptions  of  bourgeois  life  than  from  the  working 
out  of  its  central  theme,  the  infelicity  of  a  young  wife  married  to  an 
unfaithful  artist.    <Modeste  Mignon*  is  interesting,  and  more  romantic 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC  Ijgy 

than  Balzac's  later  works  were  wont  to  be;  but  while  it  may  be 
safely  recommended  to  the  average  novel-reader,  few  admirers  of  its 
author  would  wish  to  have  it  taken  as  a  sample  of  their  master. 
*  Beatrix  ^  is  a  powerful  story  in  its  delineation  of  the  weakness  of  the 
young  Breton  nobleman,  Calyste  du  Guenic.  It  derives  a  factitious 
interest  from  the  fact  that  George  Sand  is  depicted  in  *  Camilla 
Maupin,*  the  notn  de  plume  of  Mile,  des  Touches,  and  perhaps  Balzac 
himself  in  Claude  Vignon,  the  critic.  Less  factitious  is  the  interest 
derived  from  Balzac's  admirable  delineation  of  a  doting  mother  and 
aunt,  and  from  his  realistic  handling  of  one  of  the  cleverest  of 
his  ladies  of  light  reputation,  Madame  Schontz;  his  studies  of  such 
characters  of  the  demi-monde — especially  of  the  wonderful  Esther  of 
the  <Splendeurs  et  miseres^  —  serving  plainly,  by  the  way,  as  a  point 
of  departure  for  Dumas  /ils.  Yet  < Beatrix^  is  an  able  rather  than  a 
truly  great  book,  for  it  neither  elevates  nor  delights  us.  In  fact,  all 
the  stories  in  this  series  are  interesting  rather  than  truly  great;  but 
all  display  Balzac's  remarkable  analytic  powers.  Love,  false  or  true, 
is  of  course  their  main  theme ;  wrought  out  to  a  happy  issue  in  <  La 
Bourse,^  a  charming  tale,  or  to  a  death  of  despair  in  <La  Grena- 
diere.^  The  childless  young  married  woman  is  contrasted  with  her 
more  fortunate  friend  surrounded  by  little  ones  (<  Memoires  de  deux 
jeunes  mariees*),  the  heartless  coquette  flirts  once  too  often  (^Le  Bal 
de  Sceaux'),  the  eligible  young  man  is  taken  in  by  a  scheming 
mother  (<  Le  Contrat  du  mariage  *),  the  deserted  husband  labors  to 
win  back  his  wife  (^  Honorine  *),  the  tempted  wife  learns  at  last  the 
real  nature  of  her  peril  (<  Une  Fille  d'Eve '') ;  in  short,  lovers  and 
mistresses,  husbands  and  wives,  make  us  participants  of  all  the  joys 
and  sorrows  that  form  a  miniature  world  within  the  four  walls  of 
every  house. 

The  *  Scenes  of  Provincial  Life  *  number  only  ten  stories,  but 
nearly  all  of  them  are  masterpieces.  They  are  <  Eugenie  Grandet,* 
*Le  Lys  dans  la  vallee,^  ^  Ursule  Mirouet,^  ^Pierrette,'  ^Le  Cure  de 
Tours,>  <La  Rabouilleuse,>  <La  Vielle  fille*  (The  Old  Maid),  <Le 
Cabinet  des  antiques  >  (The  Cabinet  of  Antiques),  <L'Illustre  Gaudis- 
sart*  (The  Illustrious  Gaudissart),  and  ^La  Muse  du  departement*  (The 
Departmental  Muse).  Of  these  *  Eugenie  Grandet'  is  of  course  easily 
first  in  interest,  pathos,  and  power.  The  character  of  old  Grandet, 
the  miserly  father,  is  presented  to  us  with  Shakespearean  vividness, 
although  Eugenie  herself  has  less  than  the  Shakespearean  charm. 
Any  lesser  artist  would  have  made  the  tyrant  himself  and  his  yield- 
ing wife  and  daughters  seem  caricatures  rather  than  living  people. 
It  is  only  the  Shakespeares  and  Balzacs  who  are  able  to  make  their 
Shylocks  and  lagos,  their  Grandets  and  Philippe  Brideaus,  monsters 
and  human  beings  at  one  and  the  same  time.     It  is  only  the  greater 


1358  HONORE   DE   BALZAC 

artists,  too,  who  can  bring  out  all  the  pathos  inherent  in  the  subjec- 
tion of  two  gentle  women  to  a  tyrant  in  their  own  household.  But 
it  is  Balzac  the  inimitable  alone  who  can  portray  fully  the  life  of 
the  provinces,  its  banality,  its  meanness,  its  watchful  selfishness,  and 
yet  save  us  through  the  perfection  of  his  art  from  the  degradation 
which  results  from  contact  with  low  and  sordid  life.  The  reader  who 
'rises  unaffected  from  a  perusal  of  <  Eugenie  Grandet*  would  be 
unmoved  by  the  grief  of  Priam  in  the  tent  of  Achilles,  or  of  Othello 
in  the  death-chamber  of  Desdemona. 

<Le  Lys  dans  la  vallee '  has  been  pronounced  by  an  able  French 
critic  to  be  the  worst  novel  he  knows;  but  as  a  study  of  more  or 
less  ethereal  and  slightly  morbid  love  it  is  characterized  by  remark- 
able power.  Its  heroine,  Madame  Mortsauf,  tied  to  a  nearly  insane 
husband  and  pursued  by  a  sentimental  lover,  undergoes  tortures  of 
conscience  through  an  agonizing  sense  of  half-failure  in  her  duty. 
Balzac  himself  used  to  cite  her  when  he  was  charged  with  not  being 
able  to  draw  a  pure  woman;  biit  he  has  created  nobler  types.  The 
other  stories  of  the  group  are  also  decidedly  more  interesting.  The 
distress  of  the  abbe  Birotteau  over  his  landlady's  treatment,  and 
the  intrigues  of  the  abbe  Troubert  (<Le  Cure  de  Tours  >)  absorb  us 
as  completely  as  the  career  of  Caesar  himself  in  Mommsen's  famous 
chapter.  The  woes  of  the  little  orphan  subjected  to  the  tyranny  of 
her  selfish  aunt  and  uncle  (<  Pierrette  >),  the  struggles  of  the  rapa- 
cious heirs  for  the  Mirouet  fortune  (<Ursule  Mirouet,>  a  story  which 
gives  us  one  of  Balzac's  purest  women,  treats  interestingly  of  mes- 
merism (and  may  be  read  without  fear  by  the  young),  the  siege  of 
Mile.  Cormon's  mature  affections  by  her  two  adroit  suitors  (<Une 
Vielle  fille>),  the  intrigues  against  the  peace  of  the  d'Esgrignons 
and  the  sublime  devotion  to  their  interests  of  the  notary  Chesnel 
(<Le  Cabinet  des  antiques  >),  and  finally  the  ignoble  passions  that 
fought  themselves  out  around  the  senile  Jean  Jacques  Rouget,  under 
the  direction  of  the  diabolical  ex-soldier  Philippe  Brideau  (<La 
Rabouilleuse,*  sometimes  entitled  <Un  Menage  de  Garcon^),  form 
the  absorbing  central  themes  of  a  group  of  novels  — or  rather  stories, 
for  few  of  them  attain  considerable  length  —  unrivaled  in  the  annals 
of  realistic  fiction. 

The  <  Scenes  of  Country  Life,>  comprising  <  Les  Paysans,'  <  Le 
Medecin  de  campagne,*  and  <  Le  Cure  de  village*  (The  Village 
Priest),  take  high  rank  among  their  author's  works.  Where  Balzac 
might  have  been  crudely  naturalistic,  he  has  preferred  to  be  either 
realistic  as  in  the  first  named  admirable  novel,  or  idealistic  as  in  the 
two  latter.  Hence  he  has  created  characters  like  the  country  physi- 
cian. Doctor  Benassis,  almost  as  great  a  boon  to  the  world  of  readers 
as  that  philanthropist  himself  was  to  the  little  village  of  his  adoption. 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC 


1359 


If  Madame  Graslin  of  <  Le  Cure  de  village  >  fails  to  reach  the  height 
of  Benassis,  her  career  has  at  least  a  sensational  interest  which  his 
lacked;  and  the  country  curate,  the  good  abbe  Bonnet,  surely  makes 
up  for  her  lack  on  the  ideal  side.  This  story,  by  the  way,  is  import- 
ant for  the  light  it  throws  on  the  workings  of  the  Roman  Church 
among  the  common  people;  and  the  description  of  Madame  Graslin's 
death  is  one  of  Balzac's  most  effective  pieces  of  writing. 

We  are  now  brought  to  the  <  Parisian  Scenes,*  and  with  the  excep- 
tion of  <  Eugenie   Grandet,*   to   the   best-known   masterpieces.      There 
are  twenty  titles;  but  as  two  of  these  are  collective  in  character,  the 
number   of  novels  and  stories   amotmts  to  twenty-four,   as  follows:^ 
v/  <Le   Pere    Goriot,*    <  Illusions    perdues,*    <Splendeurs    et    miseres    des 
courtisanes,*  <  Les  Secrets   de  la  princesse  de  Cadignan*  (The  Secrets 
of  the  Princess  of   Cadignan),   <  Histoire  des  treize'  [containing  <  Fer- 
ragus,*  ^La  Duchesse  de  Langeais,'  and  <La  Fille  aux  yeux  d'or>  (The 
Girl  with  the  Golden  Eyes)],  <Sarrasine,*  <Le  Colonel  Chabert,*  <  L'ln- 
terdiction*  (The  Interdiction),   <  Les  Parents  pamTes*  (Poor  Relations, 
including  <La   Cousine  Bette  >  and  <  Le  Cousin  Pons*),  <  La  Messe  de 
I'athee*  (The  Atheist's  Mass),   ^Facino  Cane,*   <Gobseck,*  <La  Maison 
Nucingen,*  ^Un   Prince    de   la   Boh  erne*   (A  Prince  of   Bohemia),   <  Es- 
quisse    d'homme   d'affaires*    (Sketch   of  a   Business  man),   <Gaudissart 
II.,*   ^Les    Comediens    sans   le   savoir*  (The  Unconscious    Humorists), 
<Les   Employes*  (The  Employees),  ^Histoire  de  Cesar  Birotteau,*  and 
<Les  Petits  bourgeois*  (Little  Bourgeois).     Of  these  twenty-four  titles 
six  belong  to  novels,  five  of  which  are  of  great  power,  nine  to  novel- 
ettes and  short  stories  too  admirable  to  be  passed  over  without  notice, 
eight  to  novelettes  and  stories  of  interest  and  value  which  need  not, 
however,    detain  us,    and   one,   <  Les   Petits  bourgeois,*  to   a  novel   of 
much    promise    unfortunately  left    incomplete.     <Les    Secrets    de    la 
princesse  de  Cadignan*  is  remarkable  chiefly  as  a  study  of  the  blind 
passion  that  often  overtakes  a  man  of  letters.      Daniel  d'Arthez,  the 
author,   a  fine  character  and  a  favorite  with  Balzac,   succumbs  to  the 
wiles  of  the  Princess  of  Cadignan  (formerly  the  dashing  and  fascinat- 
ing Duchesse  de  Maufrigneuse)  and  is  happy  in  his  subjection.     The 
<  Histoire  des  treize  *  contains  three  novelettes,  linked  together  through 
the  fact  that  in   each   a  band  of  thirteen  young  men,   sworn  to  assist 
one  another  in  conquering  society,  play  an  important  part.      This  vol- 
ume is  the  most  frankly  sensational  of  Balzac's  works.     *  La  Duchesse 
de  Langeais,*  however,   is  more   than   sensational:    it    gives    perhaps 
Balzac's   best   description   of    the   Faubourg   St.   Germain   and   one   of 
his  ablest   analyses    of   feminine   character,   while    in   the   description 
of   General   Montriveau's   recognition   of  the   Duchess  in  the  Spanish 
convent  the   novelist's   dramatic   power   is   seen   at  its  highest.      ^La 
Fille   aux  yeux    d'or,*  which    concludes    the   volume    devoted    to   the 


1360 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC 


mysterious  brotherhood,  may  be  considered,   with  <Sarrasine,'  one  of 
the   dark   closets   of   the   great  building   known   as  the  *■  Comedie  hu- 
maine.*    Both  stories  deal  with  unnatural  passions,  and  the  first  is  one 
of  Balzac's  most  effective  compositions.     For  sheer  voluptuousness  of 
style   there   is  little   in   literature   to   parallel   the    description   of    the 
boudoir   of   the   uncanny   heroine.     Very   different   from  these   stories 
is   <Le   Colonel    Chabert,>    the    record    of   the    misfortunes   of    one   of 
Napoleon's   heroic    soldiers,    who    after    untold    hardships    returns    to 
France   to   find   his   wife   married   a   second    time   and   determined   to 
deny  his   existence.     The   law   is   invoked,    but   the   treachery  of  the 
wife   induces  the  noble   old  man  to   put  an  end   to   the   proceedings, 
after  which   he   sinks   into  an  indigent  and  pathetic  senility.     Balzac 
has    never    drawn    a    more    heart-moving    figure,    nor    has    he    ever 
sounded  more   thoroughly  the  depths  of  human  selfishness.     But  the 
description   of    the    battle   of    Eylau   and    of    Chabert's    sufferings    in 
retreat   would   alone  suffice  to  make   the   story  memorable.     <  L'lnter- 
diction*  is  the  proper  pendant  to  the  history  of  this  unfortunate  sol- 
dier.    In  it  another  husband,  the  Marquis   d'Espard,  suffers  from  the 
selfishness  of  his  wife,   one  of  the  worst  characters  in   the   range   of 
Balzac's  fiction.     That  she  may  keep  him  from  alienating  his  property 
to  discharge  a  moral  obligation  she  endeavors  to  prove  him  insane. 
The  legal   complications   which   ensue   bring  forward  one  of   Balzac's 
great  figures,  the  judge  of  instruction,  Popinot;  but  to  appreciate  him 
the    reader  must    go  to   the   marvelous  book    itself.      <  Gobseck  >   is  a 
study    of    a    Parisian    usurer,    almost    worthy    of    a   place    beside   the 
description  of  old  Grandet;  while  <Les  Employes  >  is  a  realistic  study 
of  bureaucratic   life,  which,  besides    showing  a  wonderful    familiarity 
with  the  details  of  a  world  of  which  Balzac  had  little  personal  expe- 
rience, contains   several   admirably  drawn   characters  and  a  sufficient 
amount    of  incident.      But    it    is    time    to    leave    these   sketches  and 
novels  in   miniature,  and   to   pass  by  the  less  important  <  Scenes  >  of 
this  fascinating  Parisian  life,  in  order   to  consider  in  some  detail  the 
five  novels  of  consummate  power. 

First  of  these  in  date  of  composition,  and  in  popular  estimation  at 
least  among  English  readers,  comes,  <  Le  Pere  Goriot.>  It  is  certainly 
trite  to  call  the  book  a  French  «  Lear,»  but  the  expression  empha- 
sises the  supreme  artistic  power  that  could  treat  the  mo/i/  of  one  of 
Shakespeare's  plays  in  a  manner  that  never  forces  a  disadvantageous 
comparison  with  the  great  tragedy.  The  retired  vermicelli-maker  is 
not  as  grand  a  figure  as  the  doting  King  of  Britain,  but  he  is  as  real. 
The  French  daughters,  Anastasie,  Countess  de  Restaud,  and  Delphine, 
Baroness  de  Nucingen,  are  not  such  types  of  savage  wickedness  as 
Regan  and  Goneril,  but  they  fit  the  nineteenth  century  as  well  as 
the  British  princesses  did  their  more  barbarous  day.     Yet  there  is  no 


HONUKE    DE   BALZAC 


1361 


Cordelia  in  *Le  Pere  Goriot,*  for  the  pale  Victorine  Taillefer  cannot 
fill  the  place  of  that  noblest  of  daughters.  This  is  but  to  say  that 
Balzac's  bourgeois  tragedy  lacks  that  element  of  the  noble  that  every 
great  poetic  tragedy  must  have.  The  self-immolation  of  old  Goriot 
to  the  cold-hearted  ambitions  of  his  daughters  is  not  noble,  but  his 
parental  passion  touches  the  infinite,  and  so  proves  the  essential  kin- 
ship of  his  creator  with  the  creator  of  Lear.  This  touch  of  the 
infinite,  as  in  <  Eugenie  Grandet, *  lifts  the  book  up  from  the  level  of 
a  merely  masterly  study  of  characters  or  a  merely  powerful  novel  to 
that  of  the  supreme  masterpieces  of  human  genius.  The  marvelously 
lifelike  description  of  the  vulgar  Parisian  boarding-house,  the  fasci- 
nating delineation  of  the  character  of  that  king  of  convicts,  Vautrin, 
and  the  fine  analysis  of  the  ambitions  of  Rastignac  (who  comes 
nearer  perhaps  to  being  the  hero  of  the  ^  Comedie  humaine  ^  than  any 
other  of  its  characters,  and  is  here  presented  to  us  at  the  threshold 
of  his  successful  career)  remain  in  the  memory  of  every  reader,  but 
would  never  alone  have  sufficed  to  make  Balzac's  name  worthy  of 
immortality.  The  infinite  quality  of  Goriot's  passion  would,  how- 
ever, have  conferred  this  honor  on  his  creator  had  he  never  written 
another  book. 

^  Illusions  perdues  *  and  <  Splendeurs  et  miseres  des  courtisanes  * 
might  almost  be  regarded  as  one  novel  in  seven  parts.  More  than 
any  other  of  his  works  they  show  the  sun  of  Balzac's  genius  at  its 
meridian.  Nowhere  else  does  he  give  us  plots  so  absorbing,  nowhere 
else  does  he  bring  us  so  completely  in  contact  with  the  world  his 
imagination  has  peopled.  The  first  novel  devotes  two  of  its  parts  to 
the  provinces  and  one  to  Paris.  The  provincial  stories  centre  around 
two  brothers-in-law,  David  Sechard  and  Lucien  de  Rubempre,  types 
of  the  practical  and  the  artistic  intellect  respectively.  David,  after 
struggling  for  fame  and  fortune,  succumbs  and  finds  his  recompense 
in  the  love  of  his  wife  Eve,  Lucien's  sister,  one  of  Balzac's  noble 
women.  Lucien,  on  the  other  hand,  after  some  provincial  successes 
as  a  poet,  tries  the  great  world  of  Paris,  yields  to  its  temptations, 
fails  ignominiously,  and  attempts  suicide,  but  is  rescued  by  the  great 
Vautrin,  who  has  escaped  from  prison  and  is  about  to  renew  his  war 
on  society  disguised  as  a  Spanish  priest.  Vautrin  has  conceived  the 
idea  that  as  he  can  take  no  part  in  society,  he  will  have  a  repre- 
sentative in  it  and  taste  its  pleasures  through  him.  Lucien  accepts 
this  disgraceful  position  and  plunges  once  more  into  the  vortex,  sup- 
ported by  the  strong  arm  of  the  king  of  the  convicts.  His  career 
and  that  of  his  patron  form  the  subject  of  the  four  parts  of  the 
*  Splendeurs  et  miseres,^  and  are  too  complicated  to  be  described 
here.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  probably  nowhere  else  in  fiction  are  the 
novel  of  character  and  the  novel  of  incident  so  splendidly  combined; 
III— 86 


1362  HONORfi  DE  BALZAC 

and  certainly  nowhere  else  in  the  range  of  his  work  does  Balzac  so 
fully  display  all  his  master  qualities.  That  the  story  is  sensational 
cannot  be  denied,  but  it  is  at  least  worthy  of  being  called  the  Iliad 
of  Crime.  Nemesis  waits  upon  both  Lucien  and  Vautrin,  and  upon 
the  poor  courtesan  Esther  whom  they  entrap  in  their  toils,  and 
when  the  two  former  are  at  last  in  custody,  Lucien  commits  suicide. 
Vautrin  baffles  his  acute  judge  in  a  wonderful  interview;  but  with 
his  cherished  hope  cut  short  by  Lucien's  death,  finally  gives  up  the 
struggle.  Here  the  novel  might  have  ended;  yet  Balzac  adds  a 
fourth  part,  in  order  to  complete  the  career  of  Vautrin.  The  famous 
convict  is  transformed  into  a  government  spy,  and  engages  to  use 
his  immense  power  against  his  former  comrades  and  in  defense  of 
the  society  he  has  hitherto  warred  upon.  The  artistic  propriety  of 
this  transformation  may  be  questioned,  but  not  the  power  and  inter- 
est of  the  novel  of  which  it  is  the  finishing  touch. 

Many  readers  would  put  the  companion  novels  ^  La  Cousine  Bette  * 
and  *Le  Cousin  Pons*  at  the  head  of  Balzac's  works.  They  have  not 
the  infinite  pathos  of  ^  Le  Pere  Goriot,*  or  the  superb  construction  of 
the  first  three  parts  of  the  <  Splendeurs  et  miseres,*  but  for  sheer 
strength  the  former  at  least  is  unsurpassed  in  fiction.  Never  before 
or  since  have  the  effects  of  vice  in  dragging  down  a  man  below  the 
level  of  the  lowest  brute  been  so  portrayed  as  in  Baron  Hulot;  never 
before  or  since  has  female  depravity  been  so  illustrated  as  in  the 
diabolical  career  of  Valerie  Marneffe,  probably  the  worst  woman  in 
fiction.  As  for  Cousine  Bette  herself,  and  her  power  to  breed  mis- 
chief and  crime,  it  suffices  to  say  that  she  is  worthy  of  a  place 
beside  the  two  chief  characters. 

<  Le  Cousin  Pons*  is  a  very  different  book;  one  which,  though 
pathetic  in  the  extreme,  may  be  safely  recommended  to  the  youngest 
reader.  The  hero  who  gives  his  name  to  the  story  is  an  old  musician 
who  has  worn  ot:t  his  welcome  among  his  relations,  but  who  becomes 
an  object  of  interest  to  them  when  they  learn  that  his  collection  of 
bric-a-brac  is  valuable  and  that  he  is  about  to  die.  The  intrigues 
that  circulate  around  this  collection  and  the  childlike  German, 
Schmucke,  to  whom  Pons  has  bequeathed  it,  are  described  as  only 
the  author  of  ^Le  Cure  de  Tours*  coiild  have  succeeded  in  doing; 
but  the  book  contains  also  an  ahnost  perfect  description  of  the  ideal 
friendship  existing  between  Pons  and  Schmucke.  One  remembers 
them  longer  than  one  does  Frazier,  the  scoundrelly  advocate  who 
cheats  poor  Schmucke;  a  fact  which  should  be  cited  against  those 
who  urge  that  Balzac  is  at  home  with  his  vicious  characters  only. 

The  last  novel  of  this  group,  <  Cesar  Birotteau,*  is  the  least  power- 
ful, though  not  perhaps  the  least  popular.  It  is  an  excellent  study 
of  bourgeois  life,  and  therefore  fills  an  important  place  in  the  scheme 


HONORE   DE 'BALZAC  1 363 

of  the  <  Comedy, >  describing  as  it  does  the  spreading  ambitions  of 
a  rich  but  stupid  perfumer,  ahd  containing  an  admirable  study  of 
bankruptcy.  It  may  be  dismissed  with  the  remark  that  around  the 
innocent  Ceesar  surge  most  of  the  scoundrels  that  figure  in  the 
<Comedie  humaine,*  and  with  the  regret  that  it  should  have  been 
completed  while  the  far  more  powerful  <  Les  Petits  bourgeois  ^  was 
left  unfinished. 

We  now  come  to  the  concluding  parts  of  the  <  Etudes  de  moeurs,^ 
the  *  Scenes  ^  describing  Political  and  Military  Life.  In  the  first  group 
are  five  novels  and  stories:  ^L'Envers  de  I'histoire  contemporaine * 
(The  Under  Side  of  Contemporary  History,  a  fine  story,  but  rather 
social  than  political),  <  Une  Tenebreuse  affaire*  (A  Shady  Affair), 
<Un  Episode  sous  la  Terreur,*  <  Z.  Marcas,*  and  <  Le  Depute  d'Arcis  * 
(The  Deputy  of  Arcis).  Of  these  the  *■  Episode '  is  probably  the  most 
admirable,    although    <Z.    Marcas*    has    not    a    little    strength.      The 

<  Depute,*  like  <Les  Petits  bourgeois,*  was  continued  by  M.  Charles 
Rabou  and  a  considerable  part  of  it  is  not  Balzac's;  a  fact  which  is 
to  be  regretted,  since  practically  it  is  the  only  one  of  these  stories 
that  touches  actual  politics  as  the  term  is  ustially  understood.  The 
military  scenes  are  only  two  in  number,  ^  Les  Chouans  *  and  <  Une 
Passion  dans  le  desert.*  The  former  of  these  has  been  sufficiently 
described  already;  the  latter  is  one  of  the  best  known  of  the  short 
stories,  but  rather  deserves  a  place  beside  <La  Fille  aux  yeux  d'or.* 
Indeed,  for  Balzac's  best  military  s-^enes  we  must  go  to  <  Le  Colonel 
Chabert*  or  to  < Adieu.* 

We  now  pass  to  those  subterranean  chambers  of  the  great  struct- 
ure -we  are  exploring,  the  *■  Etudes  philosophiques.  *  They  are  twenty 
in  number,  four  being  novels,  one  a  composite  volume  of  tales,  and 
the  rest  stories.  The  titles  run  as  follows:  —  ^La  Peau  de  chagrin,* 
^L'Elixir  de  longue  vie*    (The   Elixir   of   Life),    ^Melmoth  reconcilie,* 

<  Le  Chef-d'oeuvre  inconnu  *  (The  Anonymous  Masterpiece),  <  Gam- 
bara,*  ^Massimila  Doni,*  <Le  Requisitionnaire,*  <  Adieu,*  ^  El  Verdugo,* 
<Les  Marana,*  <  L'Auberge  rouge*  (The  Red  Inn),  <  Un  Drame  au 
bord  de  la  mer*  (A  Seaside  Drama),  <  L 'Enfant  maudit  *  (A  Child 
Accursed),,  ^  Maitre  Cornelius  *  (Master  Cornelius),  ^  Sur  Catherine  de 
Medicis,*  <La  Recherche  de  I'absolu,*  <  Louis  Lambert,*  <Seraphita,* 
<Les  Proscrits,*  and  ^Jesus-Christ  en  Flandre.* 

Of  the  novels,  <La  Peau  de  chagrin*  is  easily  first.  Its  central 
theme  is  the  world-old  conflict  between  the  infinite  desires  and  the 
finite  powers  of  man.  The  hero,  Raphael,  is  hardly,  as  M.  Barriere 
asserts,  on  a  level  with  Hamlet,  Faust,  and  Manfred,  but  the  struggle 
of  his  infinite  and  his  finite  natures  is  almost  as  intensely  interesting 
as  the  similar  struggles  in  them.  The  introduction  of  the  talisman, 
the  wild  ass's  skin  that  accomplishes  all  the  wishes  of  its  owner,  but 


,^64  HONORS   DE   BALZAC 

on  condition  that  it  is  to  shrink  away  m  proportion  to  the  intensity 
of  those  wishes,  and  that  when  it  disappears  the  owner's  life  is  to 
end,  gave  to  the  story  a  weird  interest  not  altogether,  perhaps,  in 
keeping  with  its  realistic  setting,  and  certainly  forcing  a  disastrous 
comparison  with  the  three  great  poems  named.  But  when  all  allow- 
ances are  made,  one  is  forced  to  conclude  that  <La  Peau  de  chagrin* 
is  a  novel  of  extraordinary  power  and  absorbing  interest;  and  that 
its  description  of  its  hero's  dissipations  in  the  libertine  circles  of 
Paris,  and  its  portrayal  of  the  sublime  devotion  of  the  heroine  Pauline 
for  her  slowly  perishing  lover,  are  scarcely  to  be  paralleled  in  liter- 
ature. Far  less  powerful  are  the  short  stories  on  similar  themes, 
entitled  <L'Elixir  de  longue  vie,*  and  <Melmoth  reconcilie*  (Melmoth 
Reconciled),  which  give  us  Balzac's  rehandling  of  the  Don  Juan  of 
Moliere  and  Byron,   and  the  Melmoth  of  Maturin. 

Below  the  ^Peau  de  chagrin,*  but  still  among  its  atithor's  best 
novels,  should  be  placed  <  La  Recherche  de  I'absolu,*  which,  as  its 
title  implies,  describes  the  efforts  of  a  chemist  to  « prove  by  chem- 
ical analysis  the  unity  of  composition  of  matter.**  In  the  pursuit  of 
his  philosophic  will-o'-the-wisp,  Balthazar  Claes  loses  his  fortune  and 
sacrifices  his  noble  wife  and  children.  His  madness  serves,  however, 
to  bring  into  relief  the  splendid  qualities  of  these  latter;  and  it  is 
just  here,  in  its  human  rather  than  in  its  philosophic  bearings,  that 
the  story  rises  to  real  greatness.  Marguerite  Claes,  the  daughter,  is 
a  noble  heroine;  and  if  one  wishes  to  see  how  Balzac's  characters 
and  ideas  suffer  when  treated  by  another  though  an  able  hand,  one 
has  but  to  read  in  conjunction  with  this  novel  the  <  Maitre  Guerin  * 
of  the  distinguished  dramatist  Emile  Augier.  A  proper  pendant  to 
this  history  of  a  noble  genius  perverted  is  <  La  Confidence  des  Rug- 
gieri,*  the  second  part  of  that  remarkable  composite  <  Sur  Catherine 
de  Medicis,*  a  book  which  in  spite  of  its  mixture  of  history,  fiction, 
and  speculative  politics  is  one  of  the  most  suggestive  of  Balzac's 
minor  productions. 

Concerning  ^Seraphita*  and  < Louis  Lambert,*  the  remaining  novels 
of  this  series,  certain  noted  mystics  assert  that  they  contain  the 
essence  of  Balzac's  genius,  and  at  least  suggest  the  secret  of  the 
universe.  Perhaps  an  ordinary  critic  may  content  himself  with  say- 
ing that  both  books  are  remarkable  proofs  of  their  author's  power, 
and  that  the  former  is  notable  for  its  marvelous  descriptions  of  Nor- 
wegian scenery. 

Of  the  lesser  members  of  the  philosophic  group,  nearly  all  are 
admirable  in  their  kind  and  degree.  <Le  Chef-d'oeuvre  inconnu*  and 
<Gambara*  treat  of  the  pains  of  the  artistic  life  and  temperament. 
*Massimila  Doni,*  like  ^Gambara,*  treats  of  music,  but  also  gives  a 
brilliant  picture  of  Venetian  life.     *Le  requisitionnaire,*  perhaps  the 


HONORfi  DE  BALZAC  1365 

best  of  Balzac's  short  stories,  deals  with  the  phenomenon  of  second 
sight,  as  < Adieu*  does  with  that  of  mental  alienation  caused  by  a 
sudden  shock.  <Les  Marana*  is  an  absorbing  study  of  the  effects  of 
heredity ;  <  L'Auberge  rouge  *  is  an  analysis  of  remorse,  as  is  also 
<Un  Drame  au  bord  de  la  mer*;  while  <L'Enfant  maudit>  is  an 
analysis  of  the  effects  of  extreme  sensibility,  especially  as  manifested 
in  the  passion  of  poetic  love.  Finally,  ^Maitre  Cornelius'  is  a  study 
of  avarice,  in  which  is  set  a  remarkable  portrait  of  Louis  XI. ;  *  Les 
Proscrits*  is  a  masterly  sketch  of  the  exile  of  Dante  at  Paris;  and 
<  Jesus-Christ  en  Flandre  *  is  an  exquisite  allegory,  the  most  delicate 
flower,  perhaps,  of  Balzac's  genius. 

It  remains  onlj^  to  say  a  few  words  about  the  third  division  of  the 
*  Comedie  humaine,'  viz.,  the  <  Etudes  analytiques. *  Only  two  mem- 
bers of  the  series,  the  *  Physiologic  du  mariage  *  and  the  <  Petites 
miseres  de  la  vie  conjugale,*  were  ever  completed,  and  they  are  not 
great  enough  to  make  us  regret  the  loss  of  the  *  Pathology  of  Social 
Life  *  and  the  other  unwritten  volumes.  For  the  two  books  we  have 
are  neither  novels  nor  profound  studies,  neither  great  fiction  nor  great 
psychology.  That  they  are  worth  reading  for  their  suggestiveness 
with  regard  to  such  important  subjects  as  marriage  and  conjugal  life 
goes  without  saying,  since  they  are  Balzac's;  but  that  they  add 
greatly  to  his  reputation,  not  even  his  most  ardent  admirer  would  be 
hardy  enough  to  afhrm. 

And  now  in  concliision,  what  can  one  say  about  this  great  writer 
that  will  not  fall  far  short  of  his  deserts  }  Plainly,  nothing,  yet  a  few 
points  may  be  accentuated  with  profit.  We  should  notice  in  the  first 
place  that  Balzac  has  consciously  tried  almost  every  form  of  prose 
fiction,  and  has  been  nearly  always  splendidly  successful.  In  analytic 
studies  of  high,  middle,  and  low  life  he  has  not  his  superior.  In  the 
novel  of  intrigue  and  sensation  he  is  easily  a  master,  while  he  suc- 
ceeds at  least  fairly  in  a  form  of  fiction  at  just  the  opposite  pole 
from  this,  to  wit,  the  idyl  (*Le  Lys  dans  la  vallee*).  In  character 
sketches  of  extreme  types,  like  <Gobseck,'  his  supremacy  has  long 
been  recognized,  and  he  is  almost  as  powerful  when  he  enters  the 
world  of  mysticism,  whither  so  few  of  us  can  follow  him.  As  a 
writer  of  novelettes  he  is  unrivaled  and  some  of  his  short  stories  are 
worthy  to  rank  with  the  best  that  his  followers  have  produced.  In 
the  extensive  use  of  dialect  he  was  a  pioneer;  in  romance  he  has 
*La  Peau  de  chagrin'  and  ^La  Recherche  de  I'absolu'  to  his  credit; 
while  some  of  the  work  in  the  tales  connected  with  the  name  of 
Catherine  de'  Medici  shows  what  he  could  have  done  in  historical  fic- 
tion had  he  continued  to  follow  Scott.  And  what  is  true  of  the  form 
of  his  fiction  is  true  of  its  elements.     Tragedy,  comedy,  melodrama 


1366  HONORfi   DE   BALZAC 

are  all  within  his  reach;  he  can  call  up  tears  and  shudders,  laughter 
and  smiles  at  will.  He  knows  the  whole  range  of  human  emotions, 
and  he  dares  to  penetrate  into  the  arcana  of  passions  almost  too 
terrible  or  loathsome  for  literature  to  touch. 

In  style,  in  the  larger  sense  of  the  word,  he  is  almost  equally 
supreme.  He  is  the  father  of  modern  realism  and  remains  its  great- 
est exponent.  He  retains  always  some  of  the  good  elements  of 
rom.ance,  —  that  is  to  say,  he  sees  the  thing  as  it  ought  to  be, — and 
he  avoids  the  pitfalls  of  naturalism,  being  a  painter  and  not  a  photog- 
rapher. In  other  words,  like  all  truly  great  writers  he  never  forgets 
his  ideals;  but  he  is  too  impartial  to  his  characters  and  has  too  fast 
a  grip  on  life  to  fall  into  the  unrealities  of  sentimentalism.  It  is 
true  that  he  lacked  the  spontaneity  that  characterized  his  great  fore- 
runner, Shakespeare,  and  his  great  contemporary,  George  Sand;  but 
this  loss  was  made  up  by  the  inevitable  and  impersonal  character  of 
his  work  when  once  his  genius  was  thoroughly  aroused  to  action. 
His  laborious  method  of  describing  by  an  accumulation  of  details 
postponed  the  play  of  his  powers,  which  are  at  their  height  in  the 
action  of  his  characters;  yet  sooner  or  later  the  inert  masses  of  his 
composition  were  fused  into  a  burning  whole.  But  if  Balzac  is  pri- 
marily a  dramatist  in  the  creation  and  manipulation  of  his  charac- 
ters, he  is  also  a  supreme  painter  in  his  presentation  of  scenes. 
And  what  characters  and  what  scenes  has  he  not  set  before  us! 
Over  two  thousand  personages  move  through  the  <  Comedie  humaine,* 
whose  biographies  MM.  Cerfberr  and  Christophe  have  collected  for 
us  in  their  admirable  ^Repertoire  de  la  comedie  humaine,^  and 
whose  chief  types  M.  Paul  Flat  has  described  in  the  first  series  of 
his  ^Essais  sur  Balzac'  Some  of  these  personages  are  of  course 
shadowy;  but  an  amazingly  large  number  live  for  us  as  truly  as 
Shakespeare's  heroes  and  heroines  do.  Nor  will  any  one  who  has 
trod  the  streets  of  Balzac's  Paris,  or  spent  the  summer  with  him  at 
the  chateau  des  Aigues  (<  Les  Paysans '),  or  in  the  beautiful  valleys 
of  Touraine,  ever  forget  the  master's  pictures. 

Yet  the  Balzac  who  with  intangible  materials  created  living  and 
breathing  men  and  women  and  unfading  scenes,  has  been  accused 
of  vitiating  the  French  language  and  has  been  denied  the  possession 
of  verbal  style.  On  this  point  French  critics  must  give  the  final 
verdict;  but  a  foreigner  may  cite  Taine's  defense  of  that  style,  and 
maintain  that  most  of  the  liberties  taken  by  Balzac  with  his  native 
language  were  forced  on  him  by  the  novel  and  far-reaching  character 
of  his  work.  Nor  should  it  be  forgotten  that  he  was  capable  at  times 
of  almost  perfect  passages  of  description,  and  that  he  rarely  con- 
founded, as  novelists  are  too  apt  to  do,  the  provinces  of  poetry  and 
prose. 


HONORE  DE  BALZAC 


1367 


"  But  one  might  write  a  hundred  essays  on  Balzac  and  not  exhaust 
him.  One  might  write  a  volume  on  his  women,  a  volume  to  refute 
the  charge  that  his  bad  men  are  better  drawn  than  his  good,  a 
volume  to  discuss  Mr.  Henry  James's  epigrammatic  declaration  that 
a  five-franc  piece  may  be  fairly  called  the  protagonist  of  the 
^Comedie  humaine.^  In  short  one  might  go  on  defending  and  prais- 
ing and  even  criticizing  Balzac  for  a  lifetime,  and  be  little  further 
advanced  than  when  one  began;  for  to  criticize  Balzac,  is  it  not  to 
criticize  life  itself? 


THE   MEETING   IN   THE   CONVENT 

From  <The  Duchess  of  Langeais> 

I 

IN  A  Spanish  town  on  an  island  of  the  Mediterranean  there  is  a 
convent  of  the  Barefooted  Carmelites,  where  the  rule  of  the 
Order  instituted  by  Saint  Theresa  is  still  kept  with  the  prim- 
itive rigor  of  the  reformation  brought  about  by  that  illustrious 
woman.  Extraordinary  as  this  fact  may  seem,  it  is  true.  Though 
the  monasteries  of  the  Peninsula  and  those  of  the  Continent  were 
nearly  all  destroyed  or  broken  up  by  the  outburst  of  the  French 
Revolution  and  the  turmoil  of  the  Napoleonic  wars,  yet  on  this 
island,  protected  by  the  British  fleets,  the  wealthy  convent  and 
its  peaceful  inmates  were  sheltered  from  the  dangers  of  change 
and  general  spoliation.  The  storms  from  all  quarters  which 
shook  the  first  fifteen  years  of  the  nineteenth  century  subsided 
ere  they  reached  this  lonely  rock  near  the  coast  of  Andalusia. 
If  the  name  of  the  great  Emperor  echoed  fitfully  upon  its  shores, 
it  may  be  doubted  whether  the  fantastic  march  of  his  glory  or 
the  flaming  majesty  of  his  meteoric  life  ever  reached  the  compre- 
hension of  those  saintly  women  kneeling  in  their  distant  cloister. 
A  conventual  rigor,  which  was  never  relaxed,  gave  to  this 
haven  a  special  place  in  the  thoughts  and  history  of  the  Catholic 
world.  The  purity  of  its  rule  drew  to  its  shelter  from  different 
parts  of  Europe  sad  women,  whose  souls,  deprived  of  human 
ties,  longed  for  the  death  in  life  which  they  found  here  in  the 
bosom  of  God.  No  other  convent  was  so  fitted  to  wean  the 
heart   and  teach  it  that  aloofness  from  the  things  of  this  world 


1368 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC 


which  the  religious  life  imperatively  demands.  On  the  Continent 
may  be  found  a  number  of  such  Houses,  nobly  planned  to  meet 
the  wants  of  their  sacred  purpose.  Some  are  buried  in  the 
depths  of  solitary  valleys;  others  hang-,  as  it  were,  in  mid-air 
above  the  hills,  clinging  to  the  moimtain  slopes  or  projecting 
from  the  verge  of  precipices.  On  all  sides  man  has  sought  out 
the  poesy  of  the  infinite,  the  solemnity  of  silence:  he  has  sought 
God;  and  on  the  mountain-tops,  in  the  abysmal  depths,  among 
the  caverhed  cliffs  he  has  found  Him.  Yet  nowhere  as  on  this 
European  islet,  half  African  though  it  be,  can  he  find  such  differ- 
ing harmonies  all  blending  to  lift  the  soul  and  quell  its  springs 
of  anguish;  to  cool  its  fevers,  and  give  to  the  sorrows  of  life  a 
bed  of  rest. 

The  monastery  is  built  at  the  extremity  of  the  island  at  its 
highest  part,  where  the  rock  by  some  convulsion  of  Nature  has 
been  rent  sharply  dowrr  to  the  sea,  and  presents  at  all  points 
keen  angles  and  edges,  slightly  eaten  away  at  the  water-line  by 
the  action  of  the  waves,  but  insurmountable  to  all  approach. 
The  rock  is  also  protected  from  assault  by  dangerous  reefs  run- 
ning far  out  from  its  base,  over  which  frolic  the  blue  waters  of 
the  Mediterranean.  It  is  only  from  the  sea  that  the  visitor  can 
perceive  the  four  principal  parts  of  the  square  structure,  which 
adheres  minutely  as  to  shape,  height,  and  the  piercing  of  its 
windows  to  the  prescribed  laws  of  monastic  architecture.  On 
the  side  towards  the  town  the  church  hides  the  massive  lines  of 
the  cloister,  whose  roof  is  covered  with  large  tiles  to  protect  it 
from  winds  and  storms,  and  also  from  the  fierce  heat  of  the  sun. 
The  church,  the  gift  of  a  Spanish  family,  looks  down  upon  the 
town  and  crowns  it.  Its  bold  yet  elegant  fagade  gives  a  noble 
aspect  to  the  little  maritime  city.  Is  it  not  a  picture  of  terres- 
trial sublimity  ?  See  the  tiny  town  with  clustering  roofs,  rising 
like  an  amphitheatre  from  the  picturesque  port  upward  to  the 
noble  Gothic  frontal  of  the  church,  from  which  spring  the  slen- 
der shafts  of  the  bell-towers  with  their  pointed  finials:  religion 
dominating  life:  offering  to  man  the  end  and  the  way  of  liv- 
ing,—  image  of  a  thought  altogether  Spanish.  Place  this  scene 
upon  the  bosom  of  the  Mediterranean  beneath  an  ardent  sky; 
plant  it  with  palms  whose  waving  fronds  mingle  their  green  life 
with  the  sculptured  leafage  of  the  immutable  architecture;  look 
at  the  white  fringes  of  the  sea  as  it  runs  up  the  reef  and  they 
Sparkle  upon  the  sapphire  of  its  wave;  see  the  galleries  and  the 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC 


1369 


terraces  built  upon  the  roofs  of  houses,  where  the  inhabitants 
come  at  eve  to  breathe  the  flower-scented  air  as  it  rises  through 
the  tree-tops  from  their  little  gardens.  Below,  in  the  harbor, 
are  the  white  sails.  The  serenity  of  night  is  coming  on;  listen 
to  the  notes  of  the  organ,  the  chant  of  evening  orisons,  the 
echoing  bells  of  the  ships  at  sea:  on  all  sides  sound  and  peace, — • 
oftenest  peace. 

Within  the  church  are  three  naves,  dark  and  mysterious.  The 
fury  of  the  winds  evidently  forbade  the  architect  to  build  out  lat- 
eral buttresses,  such  as  adorn  all  other  cathedrals,  and  between 
which  little  chapels  are  usually  constructed.  Thus  the  strong 
walls  which  flank  the  lesser  naves  shed  no  light  into  the  building. 
Outside,  their  gray  masses  are  shored  up  from  point  to  point  by 
enormous  beams.  The  great  nave  and  its  two  small  lateral  gal- 
leries are  lighted  solely  by  the  rose-window  of  stained  glass, 
which  pierces  with  miraculous  art  the  wall  above  the  great  por- 
tal, whose  fortunate  exposure  permits  a  wealth  of  tracery  and 
dentellated  stone-work  belonging  to  that  order  of  architecture 
miscalled  Gothic. 

The  greater  part  of  the  three  naves  is  given  up  to  the  inhabi- 
tants of  the  town  who  come  to  hear  Mass  and  the  Offices  of  the 
Church.  In  front  of  the  choir  is  a  latticed  screen,  within  which 
brown  curtains  hang  in  ample  folds,  slightly  parted  in  the  middle 
to  give  a  limited  view  of  the  altar  and  the  officiating  priest.  The 
screen  is  divided  at  intervals  by  pillars  that  hold  up  a  gallery 
within  the  choir  which  contains  the  organ.  This  construction,  in 
harmony  with  the  rest  of  the  building,  continues,  in  sculptured 
wood,  the  little  columns  of  the  lateral  galleries  which  are  sup- 
ported by  the  pillars  of  the  great  nave.  Thus  it  is  impossible 
for  the  boldest  curiosity,  if  any  such  should  dare  to  mount  the 
narrow  balustrade  of  these  galleries,  to  see  farther  into  the  choir 
than  the  octagonal  stained  windows  which  pierce  the  apse  behind 
the  high  altar. 

At  the  time  of  the  French  expedition  into  Spain  for  the  pur 
pose  of  re-establishing  the  authority  of  Ferdinand  VII.,  and 
after  the  fall  of  Cadiz,  a  French  general  who  was  sent  to  the 
island  to  obtain  its  recognition  of  the  royal  government  pro- 
longed his  stay  upon  it  that  he  might  reconnoitre  the  convent  and 
gain,  if  possible,  admittance  there.  The  enterprise  was  a  delicate 
one.  But  a  man  of  passion, —  a  man  whose  life  had  been,  so  to 
speak,    a    series    of    poems   in    action,    who    had    lived    romances 


12 70  HONORE  DE   BALZAC 

instead  of  writing-  them;  above  all  a  man  of  deeds, —  might  well 
be  tempted  by  a  project  apparently  &)  impossible.  To  open  for 
himself  legally  the  gates  of  a  convent  of  women!  The  Pope  and 
the  Metropolitan  Archbishop  would  scarcely  sanction  it.  Should 
he  use  force  or  artifice  ?  In  case  of  failure  was  he  not  certain 
to  lose  his  station  and  his  military  future,  besides  missing  his 
aim  ?  The  Due  d'Angouleme  was  still  in  Spain ;  and  of  all  the 
indiscretions  which  an  officer  in  favor  with  the  commander-in- 
chief  could  commit,  this  alone  would  be  punished  without  pity. 
The  general  had  solicited  his  present  mission  for  the  purpose  of 
following  up  a  secret  hope,  albeit  no  hope  was  ever  so  despair- 
ing. This  last  effort,  however,  was  a  matter  of  conscience.  The 
house  of  these  Barefooted  Carmelites  was  the  only  Spanish  con- 
vent which  had  escaped  his  search.  While  crossing  from  the 
mainland,  a  voyage  which  took  less  than  an  hour,  a  strong  pre- 
sentiment of  success  had  seized  his  heart.  Since  then,  although 
he  had  seen  nothing  of  the  convent  but  its  walls,  nothing  of  the 
nuns,  not  so  much  as  their  brown  habit;  though  he  had  heard 
only  the  echoes  of  their  chanted  liturgies, —  he  had  gathered  from 
those  walls  and  from  these  chants  faint  indications  that  seemed 
to  justify  his  fragile  hope.  Slight  as  the  auguries  thus  capri- 
ciously awakened  might  be,  no  himian  passion  was  ever  more 
violently  roused  than  the  curiosity  of  this  French  general.  To 
the  heart  there  are  no  insignificant  events;  it  magnifies  all 
things;  it  puts  in  the  same  balance  the  fall  of  an  empire  and  the 
fall  of  a  woman's  glove, —  and  oftentimes  the  glove  outweighs 
the  empire.  But  let  us  give  the  facts  in  their  actual  simplicity: 
after  the  facts  will  come  the  feelings. 

An  hour  after  the  expedition  had  landed  on  the  island  the 
royal  authority  was  re-established.  A  few  Spaniards  who  had 
taken  refuge  there  after  the  fall  of  Cadiz  embarked  on  a  vessel 
which  the  general  allowed  them  to  charter  for  their  voyage  to 
London.  There  was  thus  neither  resistance  nor  reaction.  This 
little  insular  restoration  could  not,  however,  be  accomplished  with- 
out a  Mass,  at  which  both  companies  of  the  troops  were  ordered 
to  be  present.  Not  knowing  the  rigor  of  the  Carmelite  rule,  the 
general  hoped  to  gain  in  the  church  some  information  about  the 
nuns  who  were  immured  in  the  convent,  one  of  whom  might  be 
a  being  dearer  to  him  than  life,  more  precious  even  than  honor. 
His  hopes  were  at  first  cruelly  disappointed.  Mass  was  cele- 
brated with  the  utmost  pomp.      In  honor  of  this  solemn  occasion 


HONORfi  DE  BALZAC  1371 

the  curtains  which  habitually  hid  the  choir  were  drawn  aside, 
and  gave  to  view  the  rich  ornaments,  the  priceless  pictures, 
and  the  shrines  incrusted  with  jewels  whose  brilliancy  surpassed 
that  of  the  votive  offerings  fastened  by  the  mariners  of  the 
port  to  the  pillars  of  the  great  nave.  The  nuns,  however,  had 
retired  to  the  seclusion  of  the  organ  gallery. 

Yet  in  spite  of  this  check,  and  while  the  Mass  of  thanksgiv- 
ing was  being  sung,  suddenly  and  secretly  the  drama  widened 
into  an  interest  as  profound  as  any  that  ever  moved  the  heart  of 
man.  The  Sister  who  played  the  organ  roused  an  enthusiasm  so 
vivid  that  not  one  soldier  present  regretted  the  order  which  had 
brought  him  to  the  church.  The  men  listened  to  the  music  with 
pleasure;  the  oiificers  were  carried  away  by  it.  As  for  the  gen- 
eral, he  remained  to  all  appearance  calm  and  cold:  the  feelings 
with  which  he  heard  the  notes  given  forth  by  the  nun  are 
among  the  small  number  of  earthly  things  whose  expression  is 
withheld  from  impotent  human  speech,  but  which  —  like  death, 
like  God,  like  eternity  —  can  be  perceived  only  at  their  slender 
point  of  contact  with  the  heart  of  man.  By  a  strange  chance  the 
music  of  the  organ  seemed  to  be  that  of  Rossini, —  a  composer 
who  more  than  any  other  has  carried  human  passion  into  the  art 
of  music,  and  whose  works  by  their  number  and  extent  will  some 
day  inspire  an  Homeric  respect.  From  among  the  scores  of  this 
fine  genius  the  nun  seemed  to  have  chiefly  studied  that  of  Moses 
in  Egypt;  doubtless  because  the  feelings  of  sacred  music  are  there 
carried  to  the  highest  pitch.  Perhaps  these  two  souls  —  one  so 
gloriously  European,  the  other  unknown  —  had  met  together  in 
some  intuitive  perception  of  the  same  poetic  thought.  This  idea 
occurred  to  two  officers  now  present,  true  dilettanti,  who  no 
doubt  keenly  regretted  the  Theatre  Favart  in  their  Spanish  exile. 
At  last,  at  the  Te  Deum,  it  was  impossible  not  to  recognize  a 
French  soul  in  the  character  which  the  music  suddenly  took  on. 
The  triumph  of  his  Most  Christian  Majesty  evidently  roused  to 
joy  the  heart  of  that  cloistered  nun.  Surely  she  was  a  French- 
woman. Presently  the  patriotic  spirit  burst  forth,  sparkling  like 
a  jet  of  light  through  the  antiphonals  of  the  organ,  as  the  Sister 
recalled  melodies  breathing  the  delicacy  of  Parisian  taste,  and 
blended  them  with  vague  memories  of  our  national  anthems. 
Spanish  hands  could  not  have  put  into  this  graceful  homage 
paid  to  victorious  arms  the  fire  that  thus  betrayed  the  origin  of 
the   musician. 


1272  HONORE   DE   BALZAC 

**  France  is  everywhere !  ^*  said  a  soldier. 

The  g-eneral  left  the  church  diirinjj;-  the  Te  Deiim;  it  was 
impossible  for  him  to  listen  to  it.  The  notes  of  the  musician 
revealed  to  him  a  woman  loved  to  madness;  who  had  buried 
herself  so  deeply  in  the  heart  of  religion,  hid  herself  so  care- 
fully away  from  the  sight  of  the  world,  that  up  to  this  time  she 
had  escaped  the  keen  search  of  men  armed  not  only  with 
immense  power,  but  with  great  sagacity  and  intelligence.  The 
hopes  which  had  wakened  in  the  general's  heart  seemed  justi- 
fied as  he  listened  to  the  vague  echo  of  a  tender  and  melancholy 
air,  *La  Fleuve  du  Tage,^  —  a  ballad  whose  prelude  he  had 
often  heard  in  Paris  in  the  boudoir  of  the  woman  he  loved,  and 
which  this  nun  now  used  to  express,  amid  the  joys  of  the  con- 
querors, the  suffering  of  an  exiled  heart.  Terrible  moment !  to 
long  for  the  resurrection  of  a  lost  love;  to  find  that  love — still 
lost;  to  meet  it  mysteriously  after  five  years  in  which  passion, 
exasperated  by  the  void,  had  been  intensified  by  the  useless 
efforts  made  to  satisfy  it. 

Who  is  there  that  has  not,  once  at  least  in  his  life,  upturned 
everything  about  him,  his  papers  and  his  receptacles,  taxing  his 
memory  impatiently  as  he  seeks  some  precious  lost  object;  and 
then  felt  the  ineffable  pleasure  of  finding  it  after  days  consumed 
in  the  search,  after  hoping  and  despairing  of  its  recovery,  — 
spending  upon  some  trifle  an  excitement  of  mind  almost  amount- 
ing to  a  passion  ?  Well,  stretch  this  fury  of  search  through  five 
long  years;  put  a  woman,  a  heart,  a  love  in  the  place  of  the 
insignificant  trifle;  lift  the  passion  into  the  highest  realms  of 
feeling;  and  then  picture  to  yourself  an  ardent  man,  a  man  with 
the  heart  of  lion  and  the  front  of  Jove,  one  of  those  men  who 
command,  and  communicate  to  those  about  them,  respectful 
terror, — you  will  then  understand  the  abrupt  departure  of  the 
general  cUiring  the  Te  Deum,  at  the  moment  when  the  prelude 
of  an  air,  once  heard  in  Paris  with  delight  under  gilded  ceilings, 
vibrated  through  the  dark  naves  of  the  church  by  the  sea. 

He  went  down  the  hilly  street  which  led  up  to  the  convent, 
without  pausing  until  the  sonorous  echoes  of  the  organ  could  no 
longer  reach  his  ear.  Unable  to  think  of  anything  but  of  the 
love  that  like  a  volcanic  eruption  rent  his  heart,  the  French  gen- 
eral only  perceived  that  the  Te  Deum  was  ended  when  the 
Spanish  contingent  poured  from  the  church.  He  felt  that  his 
conduct   and   appearance   were   open   to   ridicule,  and  he   hastily 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC  1 3 73 

resumed  his  place  at  the  head  of  the  cavalcade,  explaining  to  the 
alcalde  and  to  the  governor  of  the  town  that  a  sudden  indisposi- 
tion had  obliged  him  to  come  out  into  the  air.  Then  it  suddenly- 
occurred  to  him  to  use  the  pretext  thus  hastily  given,  as  a 
means  of  prolonging  his  stay  on  the  island.  Excusing  himself 
on  the  score  of  increased  illness,  he  declined  to  preside  at  the 
banquet  given  by  the  authorities  of  the  island  to  the  French 
officers,  and  took  to  his  bed,  after  writing  to  the  major-general 
that  a  passing  illness  compelled  him  to  turn  over  his  command 
to  the  colonel.  This  commonplace  artifice,  natural  as  it  was, 
left  him  free  from  all  duties  and  able  to  seek  the  fulfilment  of 
his  hopes.  Like  a  man  essentially  Catholic  and  monarchical,  he 
inquired  the  hours  of  the  various  services,  and  showed  the 
utmost  interest  in  the  duties  of  religion, — a  piety  which  in 
Spain  excited  no  surprise. 

II 

The  following  day,  while  the  soldiers  were  embarking,  the  gen- 
eral went  up  to  the  convent  to  be  present  at  vespers.  He  found 
the  church  deserted  by  the  townspeople,  who  in  spite  of  their 
natural  devotion  were  attracted  to  the  port  by  the  embarkation 
of  the  troops.  The  Frenchman,  glad  to  find  himself  alone  in. the 
church,  took  pains  to  make  the  clink  of  his  spurs  resound 
through  the  vaulted  roof;  he  walked  noisily^  and  coughed,  and 
spoke  aloud  to  himself,  hoping  to  inform  the  nuns,  but  especially 
the  Sister  at  the  organ,  that  if  the  French  soldiers  were  depart- 
ing, one  at  least  remained  behind.  Was  this  singular  method  of 
communication  heard  and  understood  ?  The  general  believed  it 
was.  In  the  Magnificat  the  organ  seemed  to  give  an  answer 
which  came  to  him  in  the  vibrations  of  the  air.  The  soul  of  the 
nun  floated  towards  him  on  the  wings  of  the  notes  she  touched, 
quivering  with  the  movements  of  the  sound.  The  music  burst 
forth  with  power;  it  glorified  the  church.  This  hymn  of  joy, 
consecrated  by  the  sublime  liturgy  of  Roman  Christianity  to  the 
uplifting  of  the  soul  in  presence  of  the  splendors  of  the  ever- 
living  God,  became  the  utterance  of  a  heart  terrified  at  its  own 
happiness  in  presence  of  the  splendors  of  a  perishable  love, 
which  still  lived,  and  came  to  move  it  once  more  beyond  the 
tomb  where  this  woman  had  buried  herself,  to  rise  again  the 
bride  of  Christ. 


1374 


HONORfi   DE  BALZAC 


The  org-an  is  beyond  all  question  the  finest,  the  most  daring, 
the  most  magnificent  of  the  instruments  created  by  human  genius. 
It  is  an  orchestra  in  itself,  from  which  a  practiced  hand  may 
demand  all  things;  for  it  expresses  all  things.  Is  it  not,  as  it 
were,  a  coign  of  vantage,  where  the  soul  may  poise  itself  ere  it 
springs  into  space,  bearing,  as  it  flies,  the  listening  mind  through 
a  thousand  scenes  of  life  towards  the  infinite  which  parts  earth 
from  heaven  ?  The  longer  a  poet  listens  to  its  gigantic  har« 
monies,  the  more  fully  will  he  comprehend  that  between  kneeling 
humanity  and  the  God  hidden  by  the  dazzling  rays  of  the  Holy 
of  Holies,  the  hundred  voices  of  terrestrial  choirs  can  alone  bridge 
the  vast  distance  and  interpret  to  Heaven  the  prayers  of  men 
in  all  the  omnipotence  of  their  desires,  in  the  diversities  of  their 
woe,  with  the  tints  of  their  meditations  and  their  ecstasies,  with 
the  impetuous  spring  of  their  repentance,  and  the  thousand 
imaginations  of  their  manifold  beliefs.  Yes !  beneath  these  soar- 
ing  vaults  the  harmonies  bom  of  the  genius  of  sacred  things 
find  a  yet  unheard-of  grandeur,  which  adorns  and  strengthens 
them.  Here  the  dim  light,  the  deep  silence,  the  voices  alternat- 
ing with  the  solemn  tones  of  the  organ,  seem  like  a  veil  through 
which  the  luminous  attributes  of  God  himself  pierce  and  radiate. 

Yet  all  these  sacred  riches  now  seem  flung  like  a  grain  of 
incense  on  the  frail  altar  of  an  earthly  love,  in  presence  of  the 
eternal  throne  of  a  jealous  and  avenging  Deity.  The  joy  of  the 
nun  had  not  the  gravity  which  properly  belongs  to  the  solemnity 
of  the  Magnificat.  She  gave  to  the  music  rich  and  graceful 
modulations,  whose  rhythms  breathed  of  human  gayety;  her 
measures  ran  into  the  brilliant  cadences  of  a  great  singer  striv- 
ing to  express  her  love,  and  the  notes  rose  buoyantly  like  the 
carol  of  a  bird  by  the  side  of  its  mate.  At  moments  she  darted 
back  into  the  past,  as  if  to  sport  there  or  to  weep  there  for  an 
instant.  Her  changing  moods  had  something  discomposed  about 
them,  like  the  agitations  of  a  happy  woman  rejoicing  at  the 
return  of  her  lover.  Then,  as  these  supple  strains  of  passionate 
emotion  ceased,  the  soul  that  spoke  returned  upon  itself;  the 
miusician  passed  from  the  major  to  the  minor  key,  and  told  her 
hearer  the  story  of  her  present.  She  revealed  to  him  her  long 
melancholy,'  the  slow  malady  of  her  moral  being, — every  day  a 
feeling  crushed,  every  night  a  thought  subdued,  hour  by  hour  a 
heart  burning  down  to  ashes.  After  soft  modulations  the  music 
took  on  slowly,  tint   by   tint,  the  hue  of  deepest  sadness.      Soon 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC  i^jc 

it  poured  forth  in  echoing  torrents  the  well-spring-s  oi  grief,  till 
suddenly  the  higher  notes  struck  clear  like  the  voice  of  angels, 
as  if  to  tell  to  her  lost  love  —  lost,  but  not  forgotten  —  that  the 
reunion  of  their  souls  must  be  in  heaven,  and  only  there:  hope 
most  precious!  Then  came  the  Amen.  In  that  no  joy,  no  tears, 
nor  sadness,  nor  regrets,  but  a  return  to  God.  The  last  chord 
that  sounded  was  grave,  solemn,  terrible.  The  musician  revealed 
the  nun  in  the  garb  of  her  vocation;  and  as  the  thunder  of  the 
basses  rolled  away,  causing  the  hearer  to  shudder  through  his 
whole  being,  she  seemed  to  sink  into  the  tomb  from  which  for  a 
brief  moment  she  had  risen.  As  the  echoes  slowly  ceased  to 
vibrate  along  the  vaulted  roofs,  the  church,  made  luminous  by 
the  music,  fell  suddenly  into  profound  obscurity. 

The  general,  carried  away  by  the  course  of  this  powerful 
genius,  had  followed  her,  step  by  step,  along  her  way.  He 
comprehended  in  their  full  meaning  the  pictures  that  gleamed 
through  that  burning  symphony;  for  him  those  chords  -told  all. 
For  him,  as  for  the  Sister,  this  poem  of  sound  was  the  future, 
the  past,  the  present.  Music,  even  the  music  of  an  opera,  is  it 
not  to  tender  and  poetic  souls,  to  wounded  and  suffering  hearts, 
a  text  which  they  interpret  as  their  memories  need  ?  If  the 
heart  of  a  poet  must  be  given  to  a  musician,  must  not  poetry 
and  love  be  listeners  ere  the  great  musical  works  of  art  are 
imderstood  ?  Religion,  love,  and  music:  are  they  not  the  tiiple 
expression  of  one  fact, — the  need  of  expansion,  the  need  of 
touching  with  their  own  infinite  the  infinite  beyond  them,  which 
is  in  the  fibre  of  all  noble  souls  ?  These  three  forms  of  poesy 
end  in  God,  who  alone  can  unwind  the  knot  of  earthly  emotion. 
Thus  this  holy  human  trinity  joins  itself  to  the  holiness  of  God, 
of  whom  we  make  to  ourselves  no  conception  unless  we  surround 
him  by  the  fires  of  love  and  the  golden  cymbals  of  music  and 
light  and  harmony. 

The  French  general  divined  that  on  this  desert  rock,  sur- 
rounded by  the  surging  seas,  the  nun  had  cherished  music  to 
free  her  soul  of  the  excess  of  passion  that  consumed  it.  Did  she 
offer  her  love  as  a  homage  to  God  ?  Did  the  love  triumph  over 
the  vows  she  had  made  to  Him  ?  Questions  difficult  to  answer. 
But,  beyond  -all  doubt,  the  lover  had  found  in  a  heart  dead  to  the 
world  a  love  as  passionate  as  that  which  burned  within  his  own. 

When  vespers  ended  he  returned  to  the  house  of  the  alcalde, 
where   he  was   quartered.      Giving  himself  over,  a  willing   prey, 


T376 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC 


to  the  delights  of  a  success  long  expected,  laboriously  sought,  his 
mind  at  first  could  dwell  on  nothing  else, —  he  was  still  loved. 
Solitude  had  nourished  the  love  of  that  heart,  just  as  his  own 
had  thriven  on  the  barriers,  successively  surmounted,  which  this 
woman  had  placed  between  herself  and  him.  This  ecstasy  of 
the  spirit  had  its  natural  duration;  then  came  the  desire  to  see 
this  woman,  to  withdraw  her  from  God,  to  win  her  back  to  him- 
self,—  a  bold  project,  welcome  to  a  bold  man.  After  the  evening 
repast,  he  retired  to  his  room  to  escape  questions  and  think  in 
peace,  and  remained  plunged  in  deep  meditation  throughout  the 
night.  He  rose  early  and  went  to  Mass.  He  placed  himself 
close  to  the  latticed  screen,  his  brow  touching  the  brown  curtain. 
He  longed  to  rend  it  away;  but  he  was  not  alone,  his  host  had 
accompanied  him,  and  the  least  imprudence  might  compromise 
the  future  of  his  love  and  ruin  his  new-found  hopes.  The  organ 
was  played,  but  not  by  the  same  hand ;  the  musician  of  the  last 
two  days  was  absent  from  its  key-board.  All  was  chill  and  pale 
to  the  general.  Was  his  mistress  worn  out  by  the  emotions 
which  had  wellnigh  broken  down  his  own  vigorous  heart  ?  Had 
she  so  truly  shared  and  comprehended  his  faithful  and  eager  love 
that  she  now  lay  exhausted  and  dying  in  her  cell  ?  At  the 
moment  when  such  thoughts  as  these  rose  in  the  general's  mind, 
he  heard  beside  him  the  voice  beloved;  he  knew  the  clear  ring 
of  its  tones.  The  voice,  slightly  changed  by  a  tremor  which 
gave  it  the  timid  grace  and  modesty  of  a  young  girl,  detached 
itself  from  the  volume  of  song,  like  the  voice  of  a  prima  donna 
in  the  harmonies  of  her  final  notes.  It  gave  to  the  ear  an 
impression  like  the  effect  to  the  eye  of  a  fillet  of  silver  or  gold 
threading  a  dark  frieze.  It  was  indeed  she !  Still  Parisian,  she 
had  not  lost  her  gracious  charm,  though  she  had  forsaken  the 
coronet  and  adornments  of  the  world  for  the  frontlet  and  serge 
of  a  Carmelite.  Having-  revealed  her  love  the  night  before  in 
the  praises  addressed  to  the  Lord  of  all,  she  seemed  now  to  say 
to  her  lover:  —  ^*  Yes,  it  is  I :  I  am  here.  I  love  forever;  yet  I 
am  aloof  from  love.  Thou  shalt  hear  me;  my  soul  shall  enfold 
thee;  but  I  must  stay  beneath  the  brown  shroud  of  this  choir, 
from  which  no  power  can  tear  me.     Thou  canst  not  see  me.  *' 

"  it  is  she !  ^*  whispered  the  general  to  himself,  as  he  raised 
his  head  and  withdrew  his  hands  from  his  face;  for  he  had  not 
been  able  to  bear  erect  the  storm  of  feeling  that  shook  his  heart 
as  the  voice  vibrated   through  the  arches  and  blended  with   the 


HONORE  DE  BALZAC 


1377 


murmur  of  the  waves.  A  storm  raged  without,  yet  peace  was 
within  the  sanctuary.  The  rich  voice  still  caressed  the  ear,  and 
fell  like  balm  upon  the  parched  heart  of  the  lover;  it  flowered 
in  the  air  about  him,  from  which  he  breathed  the  emanations 
of  her  spirit  exhaling  her  love  through  the  aspirations  of  its 
prayer. 

The  alcalde  came  to  rejoin  his  guest,  and  found  him  bathed 
in  tears  at  the  elevation  of  the  Host  which  was  chanted  by  the 
nun.  Surprised  to  find  such  devotion  in  a  French  officer,  he 
invited  the  confessor  of  the  convent  to  join  them  at  supper,  and 
informed  the  general,  to  whom  no  news  had  ever  given  such 
pleasure,  of  what  he  had  done.  During  the  supper  the  general 
made  the  confessor  the  object  of  much  attention,  and  thus  con- 
firmed the  Spaniards  in  the  high  opinion  they  had  formed  of  his 
piety.  He  inquired  with  grave .  interest  the  number  of  the  nuns, 
and  asked  details  about  the  revenues  of  the  convent  and  its 
wealth,  with  the  air  of  a  man  who  politely  wished  to  choose 
topics  which  occupied  the  mind  of  the  good  old  priest.  Then  he 
inquired  about  the  life  led  by  the  sisters.  Could  they  go  out  ? 
Could  they  see  friends  ? 

*^Senhor,^*  said  the  venorable  priest,  "the  rule  is  severe.  If 
the  permission  of  our  Holy  Father  must  be  obtained  before  a 
woman  can  enter  a  house  of  Saint  Bruno  [the  Chartreux]  the 
like  rule  exists  here.  It  is  impossible  for  any  man  to  enter  a 
convent  of  the  Bare-footed  Carmelites,  unless  he  is  a  priest 
delegated  by  the  archbishop  for  duty  in  the  House.  No  nun  can 
go  out.  It  is  true,  however,  that  the  Great  Saint,  Mother 
Theresa,  did  frequently  leave  her  cell.  A  Mother-superior  can 
alone,  under  authority  of  the  archbishop,  permit  a  nun  to  see 
her  friends,  especially  in  case  of  illness.  As  this  convent  is  one 
of  the  chief  Houses  of  the  Order,  it  has  a  Mother-superior 
residing  in  it.  We  have  several  foreigners, —  among  them  a 
Frenchwoman,  Sister  Theresa,  the  one  who  directs  the  music  in 
the  chapel." 

*  Ah ! "  said  the  general,  feigning  surprise :  "  she  must  have 
been  gratified  by  the  triumph  of  the  House  of  Bourbon  ?  '* 

**I  told  them  the  object  of  the  Mass;   they  are  always  rather 


curious. " 


*  Perhaps   Sister   Theresa  has   some   interests   in    France ;    she 
might  be  glad  to  receive  some  news,  or  ask  some  questions  ? " 
"  I  think  not ;   or  she  would  have  spoken  to  me. " 

HI— 87 


^378 


HONORE  DE  BALZAC 


**  As  a  compatriot/'  said  the  general,  **  I  should  be  curious  to 
see  —  that  is,  if  it  were  possible,  if  the  superior  would  consent, 
if— » 

*'  At  the  grating-,  even  in  the  presence  of  the  reverend  Mother, 
an  interview  would  be  absolutely  impossible  for  any  ordinary 
man,  no  matter  who  he  was;  but  in  favor  of  a  liberator  of  a 
Catholic  throne  and  our  holy  religion,  possibly,  in  spite  of  the 
rigid  rule  of  our  Mother  Theresa,  the  rule  might  be  relaxed," 
said  the  confessor.     *^  I  will  speak  about  it." 

^*  How  old  is  Sister  Theresa  ? "  asked  the  lover,  who  dared  not 
question  the  priest  about  the  beauty  of  the  nun. 

^*  She  is  no  longer  of  any  age,"  said  the  good  old  man,  with 
a  simplicity  which  made  the  general  shudder. 

Ill 

The  next  day,  before  the  siesta,  the  confessor  came  to  tell  the 
general  that  Sister  Theresa  and  the  Mother-superior  consented  to 
receive  him  at  the  grating  that  evening  before  the  hour  of  ves- 
pers. After  the  siesta,  during  which  the  Frenchman  had  whiled 
away  the  time  by  walking  round  the  port  in  the  fierce  heat  of 
the-  sun,  the  priest  came  to  show  him  the  way  into  the  con- 
vent. 

He  was  guided  through  a  gallery  which  ran  the  length  of  the 
cemetery,  where  fountains  and  trees  and  numerous  arcades  gave 
a  cool  freshness  in  keeping  with  that  still  and  silent  spot.  When 
they  reached  the  end  of  this  long  gallery,  the  priest  led  his  com- 
panion into  a  parlor,  divided  in  the  middle  by  a  grating  covered 
with  a  brown  curtain.  On  the  side  which  we  must  call  public, 
and  where  the  confessor  left  the  general,  there  was  a  wooden 
bench  along  one  side  of  the  wall;  some  chairs,  also  of  wood,  were 
near  the  grating.  The  ceiling  was  of  wood,  crossed  by  heavy 
beams  of  the  evergreen  oak,  without  ornament.  Daylight  came 
from  two  windows  in  the  division  set  apart  for  the  nuns,  and 
was  absorbed  by  the  brown  tones  of  the  room;  so  that  it  barely 
showed  the  picture  of  the  great  black  Christ,  and  those  of  Saint 
Theresa  and  the  Blessed  Virgin,  which  hung  on  the  dark  panels 
of  the  walls. 

The  feelings  of  the  general  turned,  in  spite  of  their  violence, 
to  a  tone  of  melancholy.  He  grew  calm  in  these  calm  precincts. 
Something  mighty  as  the  grave  seized  him  beneath  these  chilling 


HONORE    DE   BALZAC  I379 

rafters.  Was  it  not  the  eternal  silence,  the  deep  peace,  the  near 
presence  of  the  infinite  ?  Through  the  stillness  came  the  fixed 
thought  of  the  cloister, —  that  thought  which  glides  through  the 
air  in  the  half-lights,  and  is  in  all  things, —  the  thought  unchange- 
able; nowhere  seen,  which  yet  grows  vast  to  .the  imagination;  the 
all-comprising  phrase,  the  peace  of  God.  It  enters  there,  with 
living  power,  into  the  least  religious  heart.  Convents  of  men 
are  not  easily  conceivable;  man  seems  feeble  and  unmanly  in 
them.  He  is  born  to  act,  to  fulfil  a  life  of  toil;  and  he  escapes 
it  in  his  cell.  But  in  a  monastery  of  women  what  strength  to 
endure,  and  yet  what  touching  weakness!  A  man  may  be  pushed 
by  a  thousand  sentiments  into  the  depths  of  an  abbey;  he  flings 
himself  into  them  as  from  a  precipice.  But  the  woman  is  drawn 
only  by  one  feeling;  she  does  not  unsex  herself, —  she  espouses 
holiness.  You  may  say  to  the  man,  Why  did  you  not  struggle  ? 
but  to  the  cloistered  woman  life  is  a  struggle  still. 

The  general  found  in  this  mute  parlor  of  the  seagirt  convent 
memories  of  himself.  Love  seldom  reaches  upward  to  solemnity; 
but  love  in  the  bosom  of  God, —  is  there  nothing  solemn  there? 
Yes,  more  than  a  man  has  the  right  to  hope  for  in  this  nine- 
teenth century,  with  our  manners  and  our  customs  what  they 
are. 

The  general's  soul  was  one  on  which  such  impressions  act. 
His  nature  was  noble  enough  to  forget  self-interest,  honors,  Spain, 
the  world,  or  Paris,  and  rise  to  the  heights  of  feeling  roused  by 
this  unspeakable  termination  of  his  long  pursuit.  What  could  be 
more  tragic  ?  How  many  emotions  held  these  lovers,  reunited  at 
last  on  this  granite  ledge  far  out  at  sea,  yet  separated  by  an 
idea,  an  impassable  barrier.  Look  at  this  man,  saying  to  him- 
self,  "Can  I  triumph  over  God  in  that-  heart'" 

A  slight  noise  made  him  quiver.  The  brown  curtain  was 
drawn  back;  he  saw  in  the  half-light  a  woman  standing,  but  her 
face  was  hidden  from  him  by  the  projection  of  a  veil,  which  lay 
in  many  folds  upon  her  head.  According  to  the  rule  of  the 
Order  she  was  clothed  in  the  brown  garb  whose  color  has  be- 
come proverbial.  The  general  could  not  see  the  naked  feet, 
which  would  have  told  him  the  frightful  emaciation  of  her  body; 
yet  through  the  thick  folds  of  the  coarse  robe  that  swathed  her, 
his  heart  divined  that  tears  and  prayers  and  passion  and  solitude 
had  wasted  her  away. 

The  chill  hand  of  a  woman,  doubtless  the  Mother-superior, 
held  back  the  curtain,  and  the  general,  examining  this  unwelccyme 


1380 


HONORfi   DE   BALZAC 


witness  of  the  interview,  encountered  the  deep  grave  eyes  of  an 
old  mm,  very  aged,  whose  clear,  even  youthful,  glance  belied 
the  wrinkles  that  furrowed  her  pale  face. 

*' Madame  la  duchesse,"  he  said,  in  a  voice  shaken  by  emotion, 
to  the  Sister,  who  bowed  her  head,  "  does  your  companion  under- 
stand French  ?  ** 

*<  There  is  no  duchess  here,"  replied  the  nun.  '^You  are  in 
presence  of  Sister  Theresa.  The  woman  whom  you  call  my 
companion  is  my  Mother  in  God,  my  superior  here  below." 

These  words,  humbly  uttered  by  a  voice  that  once  harmonized 
with  the  luxury  and  elegance  in  which  this  woman  had  lived 
queen  of  the  world  of  Paris,  that  fell  from  lips  whose  language 
had  been  of  old  so  gay,  so  mocking,  struck  the  general  as  if 
with  an  electric  shock. 

**  My  holy  Mother  speaks  only  Latin  and  Spanish,"  she  added. 

"  I   understand  neither.     Dear   Antoinette,    make    her   my   ex- 


cuses. " 


As  she  heard  her  name  softly  uttered  by  a  man  once  so  hard 
to  her,  the  nun  was  shaken  by  emotion,  betrayed  only  by  the 
light  quivering  of  her  veil,  on  which  the  light  now  fully  fell. 

^*  My  brother,"  she  said,  passing  her  sleeve  beneath  her  veil, 
perhaps  to  wipe  her  eyes,  <^my  name  is  Sister  Theresa." 

Then  she  turned  to  the  Mother,  and  said  to  her  in  Spanish  a 
few  words  which  the  general  plainly  heard.  He  knew  enough  of 
the  language  to  understand  it,  perhaps  to  speak  it.  "  My  dear 
Mother,  this  gentleman  presents  to  you  his  respects,  and  begs 
you  to  excuse  him  for  not  laying  them  himself  at  your  feet;  but 
he  knows  neither  of  the  languages  which  you  speak." 

The  old  woman  slowly  bowed  her  head;  her  countenance  took 
an  expression  of  angelic  sweetness,  tempered,  nevertheless,  by 
the  consciousness  of  her  power  and  dignity. 

<*  You  know  this  gentleman  ? "  she  asked,  with  a  piercing 
glance  at  the  Sister. 

«  Yes,  my  Mother. " 

"Retire  to  your  cell,  my  daughter,"  said  the  Superior  in  a 
tone  of  authority. 

The  general  hastily  withdrew  to  the  shelter  of  the  curtain, 
lest  his  face  should  betray  the  anguish  these  words  cost  him;  but 
he  fancied  that  the  penetrating  eyes  of  the  Superior  followed 
him  even  into  the  shadow.  This  woman,  arbiter  of  the  frail  and 
fleeting  joy  he  had  won  at  such  cost,  made  him  afraid;  he  trem- 
bled, he  whom  a  triple  range  of  cannon  could  not  shake. 


HONORE   DE  BALZAC 


1381 


The  duchess  walked  to  the  door,  but  there  she  turned.  *^  My 
Mother,  **  she  said,  in  a  voice  horribly  calm,  "  this  Frenchman  is 
one  of  my  brothers.'* 

**  Remain,  therefore,  my  daughter,'*  said  the  old  woman,  after 
a  pause. 

The  Jesuitism  of  this  answer  revealed  such  love  and  such 
regret,  that  a  man  of  less  firmness  than  the  general  would  have 
betrayed  his  joy  in  the  midst  of  a  peril  so  novel  to  him.  But 
what  value  could  there  be  in  the  words,  looks,  gestures  of  a  love 
that  must  be  hidden  from  the  eyes  of  a  lynx,  the  claws  of  a 
tiger  ?     The  Sister  came  back. 

^*  You  see,  my  brother,  '*  she  said,  "  what  I  have  dared  to  do 
that  I  might  for  one  moment  speak  to  you  of  your  salvation,  and 
tell  you  of  the  prayers  which  day  by  day  my  soul  offers  to 
heaven  on  your  behalf.  I  have  committed  a  mortal  sin, —  I  have 
lied.  How  many  days  of  penitence  to  wash  out  that  lie!  But  I 
shall  suffer  for  you.  You  know  not,  my  brother,  the  joy  of  lov- 
ing in  heaven,  of  daring  to  avow  affections  that  religion  has 
purified,  that  have  risen  to  the  highest  regions,  that  at  last  we 
know  and  feel  with  the  soul  alone.  If  the  doctrines  —  if  the 
spirit  of  the  saint  to  whom  we  owe  this  refuge  had  not  lifted  me 
above  the  anguish  of  earth  to  a  world,  not  indeed  where  she  is, 
but  far  above  my  lower  life,  I  could  not  have  seen  you  now. 
But  I  can  see  you,  I  can  hear  you,  and  remain  calm.*' 

"Antoinette,''  said  the  general,  interrupting  these  words,  "suf- 
fer me  to  see  you  —  you,  whom  I  love  .passionately,  to  madness, 
as  you  once  would  have  had  me  love  you." 

"Do  not  call  me  Antoinette,  I  implore  you:  memories  of  the 
past  do  me  harm.  See  in  me  only  the  Sister  Theresa,  a  creature 
trusting  all  to  the  divine  pity.  And,"  she  added,  after  a  pause, 
"subdue  yourself,  my  brother.  Our  Mother  would  separate  us 
instantly  if  your  face  betrayed  earthly  passions,  or  your  eyes  shed 
tears. " 

The  general  bowed  his  head,  as  if  to  collect  himself;  when 
he  again  lifted  his  eyes  to  the  grating  he  saw  between  two  bars 
the  pale,  emaciated,  but  still  ardent  face  of  the  nun.  Her  com- 
plexion, where  once  had  bloomed  the  loveliness  of  youth, —  where 
once  there  shone  the  happy  contrast  of  a  pure,  clear  whiteness 
with  the  colors  of  a  Bengal  rose, — now  had  the  tints  of  a  porce- 
lain cup  through  which  a  feeble  light  showed  faintly.  The  beau- 
tiful hair  of  which  this  woman  was  once  so  proud  was  shaven ;   a 


1382 


HONORE   DE  BALZAC 


white  band  bound  her  brows  and  was  wrapped  around  her  face. 
Her  eyes,  circled  with  dark  shadows  due  to  the  austerities  of  her 
life,  glanced  at  moments  with  a  feverish  light,  of  which  their 
habitual  calm  was  but  the  mask.  In  a  word,  of  this  woman 
nothing  remained  but  her  soul. 

^*Ah!  you  will  leave  this  tomb  —  you,  who  are  my  life!  You 
belonged  to  me;  you  were  not  free  to  give  yourself  —  not  even 
to  God.  Did  you  not  promise  to  sacrifice  all  to  the  least  of  my 
commands  ?  Will-  you  now  think  me  worthy  to  claim  that  promise, 
if  I  tell  you  what  I  have  done  for  your  sake  ?  I  have  sought 
you  through  the  whole  world.  For  five  years  you  have  been  the 
thought  of  every  instant,  the  occupation  of  every  hour,  of  my  life. 
My  friends — friends  all-powerful  as  you  know  —  have  helped  me 
to  search  the  convents  of  France,  Spain,  Italy,  Sicily,  America. 
My  love  has  deepened  with  every  fruitless  search.  Many  a  long 
journey  I  have  taken  on  a  false  hope.  I  have  spent  my  life  and 
the  strong  beatings  of  my  heart  about  the  walls  of  cloisters.  I 
will  not  speak  to  you  of  a  fidelity  unlimited.  What  is  it?  —  noth- 
ing compared  to  the  infinitude  of  my  love !  If  in  other  days  your 
remorse  was  real,  you  cannot  hesitate  to  follow  me  now.** 

"  You  forget  that  I  am  not  free, " 

**  The  duke  is  dead,  **  he  said  hastily. 

Sister  Theresa  colored.  **  May  Heaven  receive  him !  '*  she  said, 
with  quick  emotion:  ^Mie  was  generous  to  me.  But  I  did  not 
speak  of  those  ties:  one  of  my  faults  was  my  willingness  to 
break  them  without  scruple  for  you." 

"You  speak  of  your  vows,**  cried  the  general,  frowning.  "I 
little  thought  that  anything  would  weigh  in  your  heart  against 
our  love.  But  do  not  fear,  Antoinette ;  I  will  obtain  a  brief  from 
the  Holy  Father  which  will  absolve  your  vows.  I  will  go  to 
Rome;  I  will  petition  every  earthly  power;  if  God  himself  came 
down  from  heaven  I  —  ** 

**  Do  not  blaspheme ! 

"'  Do  not  fear  how  God  would  see  it !  Ah !  I  wish  I  were  as 
sure  that  you  will  leave  these  walls  with  me;  that  to-night  —  to- 
night, you  would  embark  at  the  feet  of  these  rocks.  Let  us  go 
to  find  happiness !  I  know  not  where  —  at  the  ends  of  the  earth ! 
With  me  you  will  come  back  to  life,  to  health  —  in  the  shelter  of 
my  love !  ** 

"Do  not  say  these  things,**  replied  the  Sister;  "you  do  not 
know  what  you  now   are  to  me.     I  love  you  better  than   I  once 


HONORfi   DE   BALZAC 


1383 


loved  you.  I  pray  to  God  for  you  daily.  I  see  you  no  longer 
with  the  eyes  of  my  body.  If  you  but  knew,  Armand,  the  joy 
of  being  able,  without  shame,  to  spend  myself  upon  a  pure  love 
which  God  protects!  You  do  not  know  the  joy  I  have  in  calling 
down  the  blessings  of  heaven  upon  your  head.  I  never  pray  for 
myself:  God  will  do  with  me  according  to  his  will.  But  you  — 
at  the  price  of  my  eternity  I  would  win  the  assurance  that  you 
are  happy  in  this  world,  that  you  will  be  happy  in  another 
throughout  the  ages.  My  life  eternal  is  all  that  misfortunes  have 
left  me  to  give  you.  I  have  grown  old  in  grief;  I  am  no  longer 
young  or  beautiful.  Ah !  you  would  despise  a  nun  who  returned 
to  be  a  woman ;  no  sentiment,  not  even  maternal  love,  could 
absolve  her.  What  could  you  say  to  me  that  would  shake  the 
unnumbered  reflections  my  heart  has  made  in  five  long  years, — . 
and  which  have  changed  it,  hollowed  it,  withered  it  ?  Ah !  I 
should  have  given  something  less  sad  to  God !  ** 

^*  What  can  I  say  to  you,  dear  Antoinette  ?  I  will  say  that  I 
love  you;  that  affection,  love,  true  love,  the  joy  of  living  in  a 
heart  all  ours, —  wholly  ours,  without  one  reservation, —  is  so  rare, 
so  difficult  to  find,  that  I  once  doubted  you;  I  put  you  to  cruel 
tests.  But  to-day  I  love  and  trust  you  with  all  the  powers  of  my 
soul.  If  you  will  follow  me  I  will  listen  throughout  life  to  no 
voice  but  thine.      I  will  look  on  no  face  —  *^ 

"  Silence,  Armand !  you  shorten  the  sole  moments  which  are 
given  to  us  to  see  each  other  here  below. '^ 

^^  Antoinette !  will  you  follow  me  ?  '* 

"I  never  leave  you.  I  live  in  your  heart  —  but  with  another 
power  than  that  of  earthly  pleasure,  or  vanity,  or  selfish  joy.  I 
live  here  for  you,  pale  and  faded,  in  the  bosom  of  God.  If  God 
is  just,  you  will  be  happy.'* 

"  Phrases !  you  give  me  phrases !  But  if  I  will  to  have  you 
pale  and  faded, — if  I  cannot  be  happy  unless  you  aie  with  me? 
What!  will  you  forever  place  duties  before  my  love?  Shall  I 
never  be  above  all  things  else  in  your  heart  ?  In  the  past  yoii 
put  the  world,  or  self  —  I  know  not  what  —  above  me ;  to-day  it 
is  God,  it  is  my  salvation.  In  this  Sister  Theresa  I  recognize  the 
duchess;  ignorant  of  the  joys  of  love,  unfeeling  beneath  a  pretense 
of  tenderness!      You  do  not  love  me!    you  never  loved  me!  —  ** 

«0h,  my  brother!  — » 

"You  will  not  leave  this  tomb.  You  love  my  soul,  you  say: 
well!  you  shall  destroy  it  forever  and  ever.    I  will  kill  myself — '* 


1384 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC 


"My  Mother!"  cried  the  mm,  **  I  have 'lied  to  you;  this  man 
is  my  lover." 

The  curtain  fell.  The  general,  stunned,  heard  the  doors  close 
with  violence. 

"  She  loves  me  still !  "  he  cried,  comprehending  all  that  was 
revealed  in  the  cry  of  the  mm.  "  I  wall  find  means  to  carry  her 
away !  " 

He  left  the  island  immediately,  and  returned  to  France. 

lYanslation  copyrighted  by  Roberts  Brothers. 


<AN    EPISODE    UNDER   THE   TERROR  > 

ON  THE  226.  of  January,  1793,  towards  eight  o'clock  in  the 
evening,  an  old  gentlewoman  came  down  the  sharp  decliv- 
ity of  the  Faubourg  Saint-Martin,  which  ends  near  the 
church  of  Saint-Laurent  in  Paris.  Snow  had  fallen  throughout 
the  day,  so  that  footfalls  could  be  scarcely  heard.  The  streets 
were  deserted.  The  natural  fear  inspired  by  such  stillness  was 
deepened  by  the  terror  to  which  all  France  was  then  a  prey. 

The  old  lady  had  met  no  one.  Her  failing  sight  hindered 
her  from  perceiving  in  the  distance  a  few  pedestrians,  sparsely 
scattered  like  shadows,  along  the  broad  road  of  the  faubourg. 
She  was  walking  bravely  through  the  solitude  as  if  her  age  were 
a  talisman  to  guard  her  from  danger;  but  after  passing  the  Rue 
des  Morts  she  fancied  that  she  heard  the  firm,  heavy  tread  of  a 
man  coming  behind  her.  The  thought  seized  her  mind  that  she 
had  been  listening  to  it  unconsciously  for  some  time.  Terrified 
at  the  idea  of  being  followed,  she  tried  to  walk  faster  to  reach  a 
lighted  shop-window,  and  settle  the  doubt  which  thus  assailed 
her.  When  well  beyond  the  horizontal  rays  of  light  thrown 
across  the  pavement,  she  turned  abruptly  and  saw  a  human  form 
looming  through  the  fog.  The  indistinct  glimpse  was  enough. 
She  staggered  for  an  instant  ^mder  the  weight  of  terror,  for  she 
no  longer  doubted  that  this  unknown  man  had  tracked  her,  step 
by  step,  from  her  home.  The  hope  of  escaping  such  a  spy  lent 
strength  to  her  feeble  limbs.  Incapable  of  reasoning,  she  quick- 
ened her  steps  to  a  run,  as  if  it  were  possible  to  escape  a  man 
necessarily  more  agile  than  she.  After  running  for  a  few  min- 
utes, she  reached  the  shop  of  a  pastry-cook,  entered  it.  and  fell, 
rather  than  sat,  down  on  a  chair  which  stood  before  the  counter. 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC  1 385 

As  she  lifted  the  creaking  latch  of  the  door,  a  young  woman, 
who  was  at  work  on  a  piece  of  embroidery,  looked  up  and  recog- 
nized through  the  glass  panes  the  antiquated  mantle  of  purple 
silk  which  wrapped  the  old  lady,  and  hastened  to  pull  open  a 
drawer,  as  if  to  take  from  thence  something  that  she  had  to  give 
her.  The  action  and  the  expression  of  the  young  woman  not 
only  implied  a  wish  to  get  rid  of  the  stranger,  as  of  some  one 
most  imwelcome,  but  she  let  fall  an  exclamation  of  impatience 
at  finding  the  drawer  empty.  Then,  without  looking  at  the 
lady,  she  came  rapidly  from  behind  the  counter,  and  went  to- 
wards the  back-shop  to  call  her  husband,  who  appeared  at  once. 

« Where  have  you  put  ?  ^^  she  asked  him,  mysteri- 
ously, calHng  his  attention  to  the  old  lady  by  a  glance,  and  not 
concluding  her  sentence. 

Although  the  pastry-cook  could  see  nothing  but  the  enormous 
black-silk  hood  circled  with  purple  ribbons  which  the  stranger 
wore,  he  disappeared,  with  a  glance  at  his  wife  which  seemed  to 
say,   **  Do  you  suppose  I  should  leave  tJiat  on  your  counter  ?  '* 

Surprised  at  the  silence  and  immobility  of  her  customer,  the 
wife  came  forward,  and  was  seized  with  a  sudden  movement 
of  compassion  as  well  as  of  curiosity  when  she  looked  at  her. 
Though  the  complexion  of  the  old  gentlewoman  was  naturally 
livid,  like  that  of  a  person  vowed  to  secret  austerities,  it  was 
easy  to  see  that  some  recent  alarm  had  spread  an  unusual  pale- 
ness over  her  features.  Her  head-covering  was  so  arranged  as 
to  hide  the  hair,  whitened  no  doubt  by  age,  for  the  cleanly  collar 
of  her  dress  proved  that  she  wore  no  powder.  The  concealment 
of  this  natural  adornment  gave  to  her  countenance  a  sort  of 
conventual  severity;  but  its  features  were  grave  and  noble.  In 
former  days  the  habits  and  manners  of  people  of  quality  were 
so  different  from  those  of  all  other  classes  that  it  was  easy  to  dis- 
tinguish persons  of  noble  birth.  The  young  shop-woman  felt 
certain,  therefore,  that  the  stranger  was  a  ci-devant,  and  one  who 
had  probably  belonged  to  the  court. 

"  Madame  ?  ^'  she   said,  with  involuntary  respect,  forgetting  that 
the  title  was  proscribed. 

The  old  lady  made  no  answer.  Her  eyes  were  fixed  on  the 
glass  of  the  shop-window,  as  if  some  alarming  ooject  were 
painted  upon  it. 

**  What  is  the  matter,  citoyenne  ?  **  asked  the  master  of  the 
establishment,     re-entering,    and    drawing    the    attention    of     his 


1386 


HONORfi   DE   BALZAC 


customer  to  a  little  cardboard  box  covered  with  blue  paper, 
which  he  held  out  to  her. 

"It  is  nothing,  nothing,  my  friends/*  she  answered  in  a  gentle 
voice,  as  she  raised  her  eyes  to  give  the  man  a  thankful  look. 
Seeing  a  phrygian  cap  upon  his  head,  a  cry  escaped  her:  —  "Ah! 
it  is  you  who  have  betrayed  me  ! " 

The  young  woman  and  her  husband  replied  by  a  deprecat- 
ing gesture  of  horror  which  caused  the  unknown  lady  to  blush, 
either  for  her  harsh  suspicion  or  from  the  relief  of  feeling  it 
unjust. 

"Excuse  me,'*  she  said,  with  childlike  sweetness.  Then  tak- 
ing a  gold  louis  from  her  pocket,  she  offered  it  to  the  pastry- 
cook.    "Here  is  the  sum  we  agreed  upon,**  she  added. 

There  is  a  poverty  which  poor  people  quickly  divine.  The 
shopkeeper  and  his  wife  looked  at  each  other  with  a  glance  at 
the  old  lady  that  conveyed  a  mvitual  thought.  The  louis  was 
doubtless  her  last.  The  hands  of  the  poor  woman  trembled  as 
she  offered  it,  and  her  eyes  rested  upon  it  sadly,  yet  not  with 
avarice.  She  seemed  to  feel  the  full  extent  of  her  sacrifice. 
Hunger  and  want  were  traced  upon  her  features  in  lines  as  legi- 
ble as  those  of  timidity  and  ascetic  habits.  Her  clothing  showed 
vestiges  of  luxury.  It  was  of  silk,  well-worn;  the  mantle  was 
clean,  though  faded;  the  laces  carefully  darned;  in  short,  here 
were  the  rags  of  opulence.  The  two  shopkeepers,  divided  be- 
tween pity  and  self-interest,  began  to  soothe  their  conscience  with 
words :  — 

"  Citoyenne^  you  seem  very  feeble  —  ** 

"  Would  Madame  like  to  take  something  ?  **  asked  the  wife, 
cutting  short  her  husband's  speech. 

"  We  have  some  very  good  broth,  **  he  added. 

"  It  is  so  cold,  perhaps  Madame  is  chilled  by  her  walk ;  but 
you  can  rest  here  and  warm  yourself.** 

"  The  devil  is  not  so  black  as  he  is  painted,  **  cried  the  hus- 
band. 

Won  by  the  kind  tone  of  these  words,  the  old  lady  admitted 
that  she  had  been  followed  by  a  man  and  was  afraid  of  going 
home  alone. 

"Is  that  all?**  said  the  man  with  the  phrygian  cap.  "Wait 
for  me,  citoye7ine.^^ 

He  gave  the  loiiis  to  his  wife.  Then  moved  by  a  species  of 
gratitude  which  slips  into  the  shopkeeping   soul  when  its  owner 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC  1387 

receives  an  exorbitant  price  for  an  article  of  little  value,  he  went 
to  put  on  his  uniform  as  a  National  guard,  took  his  hat,  slung 
on  his  sabre,  and  reappeared  under  arms.  But  the  wife  mean- 
dme  had  reflected.  Reflection,  as  often  happens  in  many  hearts, 
had  closed  the  open  hand  of  her  benevolence.  Uneasy,  and 
alarmed  lest  her  husband  should  be  mixed  up  in  some  dangerous 
affair,  she  pulled  him  by  the  flap  of  his  coat,  intending  to  stop 
him;  but  the  worthy  man,  obeying  the  impulse  of  charity, 
promptly  offered  to  escort  the  poor  lady  to  her  home. 

«It  seems  that  the  man  who  has  giyen  her  this  fright  is 
prowling  outside,*'  said  his  wife  nervously. 

«I  am  afraid  he  is,*'   said   the   old  lady,  with  much  simplicity. 

« Suppose  he  should  be  a  spy.  Perhaps  it  is  a  conspiracy. 
Don't  go.  Take  back  the  box.**  These  words,  whispered  in  the 
pastry-cook's  ear  by  the  wife  of  his  bosom,  chilled  the  sudden 
compassion  that  had  warmed  him. 

"Well,  well,  I  will  just  say  two  words  to  the  man  and  get  rid 
of  him,**  he  said,  opening  the  door  and  hurrying  out. 

The  old  gentlewoman,  passive  as  a  child  and  half  paralyzed 
with  fear,  sat  down  again.  The  shopkeeper  almost  instantly  re- 
appeared; but  his  face,  red  by  nature  and  still  further  scorched 
by  the  fires  of  his  bakery,  had  suddenly  turned  pale,  and  he  was 
in  the  grasp  of  such  terror  that  his  legs  shook  and  his  eyes  were 
like  those  of  a  drunken  man. 

"Miserable  aristocrat!**  he  cried,  furiously,  "do  you  want  to 
cut  off  our  heads  ?  Go  out  from  here ;  let  me  see  your  heels, 
and  don't  dare  to  come  back;  don't  expect  me  to  supply  you 
with  the  means  of  conspiracy !  ** 

So  saying,  the  pastry-cook  endeavored  to  get  back  the  little 
box  which  the  old  lady  had  already  slipped  into  one  of  her 
pockets.  Hardly  had  the  bold  hands  of  the  shopkeeper  touched 
her  clothing,  than,  preferring  to  encounter  danger  with  no  pro- 
tection but  that  of  God  rather  than  lose  the  thing  she  had  come 
to  buy,  she  recovered  the  agility  of  youth,  and  sprang  to  the 
door,  through  which  she  disappeared  abruptly,  leaving  the  hus- 
band and  wife  amazed  and  trembling. 

As  soon  as  the  poor  lady  found  herself  alone  in  the  street  she 
began  to  walk  rapidly;  but  her  strength  soon  gave  way,  for  she 
once  more  heard  the  snow  creaking  under  the  footsteps  of  the 
spy  as  he  trod  heavily  upon  it.  She  was  obliged  to  stop  short: 
the   man   stopped   also.      She  dared  not  speak   to   him,  nor   even 


1388 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC 


look  at  him;  either  because  of  her  terror,  or  from  some  lack  of 
natural  intellig-ence.  Presently  she  continued  her  walk  slowly; 
the  man  measured  his  step  by  hers,  and  kept  at  the  same  dis- 
tance behind  her;  he  seemed  to  move  like  her  shadow.  Nine 
o'clock  struck  as  the  silent  couple  repassed  the  church  of  Saint- 
Laurent.  It  is  the  nature  of  all  souls,  even  the  weakest,  to  fall 
back  into  quietude  after  moments  of  violent  agitation;  for  mani- 
fold as  our  feelings  may  be,  our  bodily  powers  are  limited. 
Thus  the  old  lady,  receiving  no  injury  from  her  apparent  perse- 
cutor, began  to  think  that  he  might  be  a  secret  friend  watching 
to  protect  her.  She  gathered  up  in  her  mind  the  circumstances 
attending  other  apparitions  of  the  mysterious  stranger  as  if  to 
find  plausible  grounds  for  this  consoling  opinion,  and  took  pleas- 
ure in  crediting  him  with  good  rather  than  sinister  intentions. 
Forgetting  the  terror  he  had  inspired  in  the  pastry-cook,  she 
walked  on  with  a  firmer  step  towards  the  upper  part  of  the  Fau- 
bourg Saint-Martin. 

At  the  end  of  half  an  hour  she  reached  a  house  standing  close 
to  the  junction  of  the  chief  street  of  the  faubourg  with  the  street 
leading  out  to  the  Barriere  de  Pantin.  The  place  is  to  this  day 
one  of  the  loneliest  in  Paris.  The  north  wind  blowing  from  Belle- 
ville and  the  Buttes  Chaumont  whistled  among  the  houses,  or 
rather  cottages,  scattered  through  the  sparsely  inhatited  little 
valley,  where  the  inclosures  are  fenced  with  walls  built  of  mud 
and  refuse  bones.  This  dismal  region  seems  the  natural  home  of 
poverty  and  despair.  The  man  who  was  intent  on  following  the 
poor  creature  who  had  had  the  courage  to  thread  these  dark  and 
silent  streets  seemed  struck  with  the  spectacle  they  offered.  He 
stopped  as  if  reflecting,  and  stood  in  a  hesitating  attitude,  dimly 
visible  by  a  street  lantern  whose  flickering  light  scarcely  pierced 
the  fog.  Fear  gave  eyes  to  the  old  gentlewoman,  who  now 
fancied  that  she  saw  something  sinister  in  the  features  of  this 
unknown  man.  All  her  terrors  revived,  and  profiting  by  the 
curious  hesitation  that  had  seized  him,  she  glided  like  a  shadow 
to  the  doorway  of  the  solitary  dwelling,  touched  a  spring,  and 
disappeared  with  phantasmagoric  rapidity. 

The  man,  standing  motionless,  gazed  at  the  house,  which  was, 
as  it  were,  a  type  of  the  wretched  buildings  of  the  neighborhood. 
The  tottering  hovel,  built  of  porous  stone  in  rough  blocks,  was 
coated  with  yellow  plaster  much  cracked,  and  looked  ready  to 
fall   before   a  gust   of  wind.       The   roof,   of   brown   tiles   covered 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC 


1389 


with  moss,  had  sunk  in  several  places,  and  gave  the  impression 
that  the  weight  of  snow  might  break  it  down  at  any  moment. 
Each  story  had  three  windows  whose  frames,  rotted  by  dampness 
and  shrunken  "by  the  heat  of  the  sun,  told  that  the  oviter  cold 
penetrated  to  the  chambers.  The  lonely  house  seemed  like  an 
ancient  tower  that  time  had  forgotten  to  destroy.  A  faint  light 
gleamed  from  the  garret  windows,  which  were  irregularly  cut  in 
the  roof;  but  the  rest  of  the  house  was  in  complete  obscurity. 
The  old  woman  went  up  the  rough  and  clumsy  stairs  with  diffi- 
culty, holding  fast  to  a  rope  which  took  the  place  of  baluster. 
She  knocked  furtively  at  the  door  of  a  lodging  under  the  roof, 
and  sat  hastily  down  on  a  chair  which  an  old  man  offered  her. 

"Hide!  hide  yourself!**  she  cried.  "Though  we  go  out  so 
seldom,  our  errands  are  known,  our  steps  are  watched — ** 

"  What  has  happened  ?  **  asked  another  old  woman  sitting  near 
the  fire. 

"The  man  who  has  hung  about  the  house  since  yesterday  fol- 
lowed me  to-night.** 

At  these  words  the  occupants  of  the  hovel  looked  at  each 
other  with  terror  in  their  faces.  The  old  man  wa*s  the  least 
moved  of  the  three,  possibly  because  he  was  the  one  in  greatest 
danger.  Under  the  pressure  of  misfortune  or  the  yoke  of  perse- 
cution a  man  of  courage  begins,  as  it  were,  by  preparing  for  the 
sacrifice  of  himself:  he  looks  upon  his  days  as  so  many  victories 
won  from  fate.  The  eyes  of  the  two  women,  fixed  upon  the 
old  man,  showed  plainly  that  he  alone  was  the  object  of  their 
extreme  anxiety. 

"  Why  distrust  God,  my  sisters  ?  **  he  said,  in  a  hollow  but 
impressive  voice.  "  We  chanted  praises  to  his  name  amid  the 
cries  of  victims  and  assassins  at  the  convent.  If  it  pleased  him 
to  save  me  from  that  butchery,  it  was  doubtless  for  some  destiny 
which  I  shall  accept  without  a  murmur.  God  protects  his  own, 
and  disposes  of  them  according  to  his  will.  It  is  of  3'ou,  not  of 
me,   that  we  should  think.** 

"No,**  said  one  of  the  women:  "what  is  our  life  in  compari- 
son with  that  of  a  priest  ?  ** 

"  Ever  since  the  day  when  I  found  myself  outside  of  the 
Abbaye  des  Chelles,**  said  the  nun  beside  the  fire,  "I  have  given 
myself  up  for  dead.** 

"Here,**  said  the  one  who  had  just  come  in,  holding  out  the 
little    box    to   the    priest,     "here    are    the    sacramental    wafers  — 


1390  HONORE   DE   BALZAC 

Listen !  **    she  cried,   interrupting  herself.      "  I  hear   some  one  on 
the  stairs.** 

At  these  words  all  three  listened  intently.      The  noise  ceased. 

"  Do  not  be  frightened,  *'  said  the  priest,  "  even  if  some  one 
asks  to  enter.  A  person  on  whose  fidelity  we  can  safely  rely  has 
taken  measures  to  cross  the  frontier,  and  he  will  soon  call  here 
for  letters  which  I  have  written  to  the  Due  de  Langeais  and  the 
Marquis  de  Beauseant,  advising  them  as  to  the  measures  they 
must  take  to  get  you  out  of  this  dreadful  country,  and  save  you 
from  the  misery  or  the  death  you  would  otherwise  undergo  here." 

"  Shall  you  not  follow  us  ?  **  said  the  two  nuns  softly,  but  in  a 
tone  of  despair. 

"  My  place  is  near  the  victims,  **  said  the  priest,  simply. 

The  nuns  were  silent,  looking  at  him  with  devout  admiration. 

"Sister  Martha,**  he  said,  addressing  the  nun  who  had  fetched 
the  wafers,  "  this  messenger  must  answer  *  Fiat  voluntas  *  to  the 
word  *  Hosatina.  *  ** 

"  There  is  some  one  on  the  stairway,  **  exclaimed  the  other 
nun,  hastily  opening  a  hiding-place  burrowed  at  the  edge  of  the 
roof. 

This  time  it  was  easy  to  hear  the  steps  of  a  man  sounding 
through  the  deep  silence  on  the  rough  stairs,  which  were  caked 
with  patches  of  hardened  mud.  The  priest  slid  with  difficulty 
into  a  narrow  hiding-place,  and  the  nuns  hastily  threw  articles  of 
apparel  over  him. 

"You  can  shut  me  in,  Sister  Agatha,**  he  said,  in  a  smothered 
voice. 

He  was  scarcely  hidden  when  three  knocks  upon  the  door 
made  the  sisters  tremble  and  consult  each  other  with  their  eyes, 
for  they  dared  not  speak.  Forty  years'  separation  from  the  world 
had  made  them  like  plants  of  a  hot-house  which  wilt  when 
brought  into  the  outer  air.  Accustomed  to  the  life  of  a  convent, 
they  could  rot  conceive  of  any  other;  and  when  one  morning 
their  bars  and  gratings  were  flung  down,  they  had  shuddered  at 
finding  themselves  free.  It  is  easy  to  imagine  the  species  of 
imbecility  which  the  events  of  the  Revolution,  enacted  before 
their  eyes,  had  produced  in  these  innocent  souls.  Quite  incapable 
of  harmonizing  their  conventual  ideas  with  the  exigencies  of 
ordinary  life,  not  even  comprehending  their  own  situation,  they 
were  like  children  who  had  always  been  cared  for,  and  who  now, 
torn   from   their   maternal   providence,    had   taken    to    prayers    as 


HONORE  DE  BALZAC  l^oi 

other  children  take  to  tears.  So  it  happened  that  in  presence  of 
immediate  danger  they  were  dumb  and  passive,  and  could  think 
of  no  other  defence  than  Christian  resignation. 

The  man  who  sought  to  enter  interpreted  their  silence  as  he 
pleased;  he  suddenly  opened  the  door  and  showed  himself.  The 
two  nuns  trembled  when  they  recognized  the  individual  who  for 
some  days  had  watched  the  house  and  seemed  to  make  inquiries 
about  its  inmates.  They  stood  quite  still  and  looked  at  him  with 
uneasy  curiosity,  like  the  children  of  savages  examining  a  being 
of  another  sphere.  The  stranger  was  very  tall  and  stout,  but 
nothing  in  his  manner  or  appearance  denoted  that  he  was  a  bad 
man.  He  copied  the  immobility  of  the  sisters  and  stood  motion- 
less, letting  his  eye  rove  slowly  round  the  room. 

Two  bundles  of  straw  placed  on  two  planks  served  as  beds 
for  the  nuns.  A  table  was  in  the  middle  of  the  room;  upon  it  a 
copper  candlestick,  a  few  plates,  three  knives,  and  a  round  loaf 
of  bread.  The  fire  on  the  hearth  was  very  low,  and  a  few  sticks 
of  wood  piled  in  a  corner  of  the  room  testified  to  the  poverty  of 
the  occupants.  The  walls,  once  covered  with  a  coat  of  paint 
now  much  defaced,  showed  the  wretched  condition  of  the  roof 
through  which  the  rain  had  trickled,  making  a  network  of  brown 
stains.  A  sacred  relic,  saved  no  doubt  from  the  pillage  of  the 
Abbaye  des  Chelles,  adorned  the  mantel-shelf  of  the  chimney. 
Three  chairs,  two  coffers,  and  a  broken  chest  of  drawers  com- 
pleted the  furniture  of  the  room.  A  doorway  cut  near  the  fire- 
place showed  there  was  probably  an  inner  chamber. 

The  'nventory  of  this  poor  cell  was  soon  made  by  the  indi- 
vidual who  had  presented  himself  under  such  alarming  auspices. 
An  expression  of  pity  crossed  his  features,  and  as  he  threw  a 
kind  c^iance  upon  the  frightened  women  he  seemed  as  much  em- 
barrassed as  they.  The  strange  silence  in  which  they  all  three 
stood  and  faced  each  other  lasted  but  a  moment;  for  the  stranger 
seemed  to  guess  the  moral  weakness  and  inexperience  of  the  poor 
helpless  creatures,  and  he  said,  in  a  voice  which  he  strove  to 
render  gentle,   ^*  I  have  not  come  as  an  enemy,  citoyenncs.  *^ 

Then  he  paused,  but  resumed :  —  ^^  My  sisters,  if  harm  should 
ever  happen  to  you,  be  sure  that  I  shall  not  have  contributed  to 
it.      I  have  come  to  ask  a  favor  of  you.** 

They  still  kept  silence. 

*  If  I  ask  too  much  —  if  I  annoy  you  —  I  will  go  away ;  but 
believe  me,   I  am  heartily  devoted  to  you,   and  if  there    is  any 


I2Q2  HONORE   DE   BALZAC 

service  that  I  could  render  you,  you  may  employ  me  without 
fear.  I,  and  I  alone,  perhaps,  am  above  law  —  since  there  is  no 
longer  a  king.  *^ 

The  ring  of  truth  in  these  words  induced  Sister  Agatha,  a 
nun  belonging  to  the  ducal  house  of  Langeais,  and  whose  man- 
ners indicated  that  she  had  once  lived  amid  the  festivities  of  life 
and  breathed  the  air  of  courts,  to  point  to  a  chair  as  if  she  asked 
their  guest  to  be  seated.  The  unknown  gave  vent  to  an  expres- 
sion of  joy,  mingled  with  melancholy,  as  he  understood  this 
gesture.  He  waited  respectfully  till  the  sisters  were  seated,  and 
then  obeyed  it. 

**  You  have  given  shelter,  ^'  he  said,  "  to  a  venerable  priest  not 
sworn  in  by  the  Republic,  who  escaped  miraculously  from  the 
massacre  at  the  Convent  of  the  Carmelites.** 

*^  Hosanjia,  **  said  Sister  Agatha,  suddenly  interrupting  the 
stranger,  and  looking  at  him  with  anxious  curiosity. 

"That  is  not  his  name,   I  think,"  he  answered. 

"  But,  Monsieur,  we  have  no  priest  here,  **  cried  Sister  Martha, 
hastily,   "  and  —  ** 

**Then  you  should  take  better  precautions,**  said  the  imknown 
gently,  stretching  his  arm  to  the  table  and  picking  up  a  breviary. 
"  I  do  not  think  you  imderstand  Latin,  and  —  ** 

He  stopped  short,  for  the  extreme  distress  painted  on  the 
faces  of  the  poor  nuns  made  him  fear  he  had  gone  too  far;  they 
trembled  violently,  and  their  eyes  filled  with  tears. 

"  Do  not  fear,  **  he  said ;  "  I  know  the  name  of  your  guest, 
and  yours  also.  During  the  last  three  days  I  have  learned  your 
poverty,  and  your  great  devotion  to  the  venerable  Abbe  of — ** 

"  Hush !  **  exclaimed  Sister  Agatha,  ingenuously  putting  a  fin- 
ger on  her  lip. 

"You  see,  my  sisters,  that  if  I  had  the  horrible  design  of 
betraying  you,   I  might  have  accomplished  it  again  and  again.** 

As  he  uttered  these  words  the  priest  emerged  from  his  prison 
and  appeared  in  the  middle  of  the  room. 

"  I  cannot  believe,  Monsieur,  **  he  said  courteously,  "  that  you 
are  one  of  our  persecutors.  I  trust  you.  What  is  it  you  desire 
of  me  ?  ** 

The  saintly  confidence  of  the  old  man,  and  the  nobility  of 
mind  imprinted  on  his  countenance,  might  have  disarmed  even 
an  assassin.  He  who  thus  mysteriously  agitated  this  home  of 
penury    and    resignation    stood    contemplating    the    group    before 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC  1,93 

him;  then  he  addressed  the  priest  in  a  trustful  tone,  with  these 
words :  — 

"  My  father,  I  came  to  ask  you  to  celebrate  a  mass  for  the 
repose  of  the  soul  —  of  —  of  a  sacred  being  whose  body  can  never 
lie  in  holy  ground." 

The  priest  involuntarily  shuddered.  The  nims,  not  as  yet 
understanding  who  it  was  of  whom  the  unknown  man  had  spo- 
ken, stood  with  their  necks  stretched  and  their  faces  turned 
towards  the  speakers,  in  an  attitude  of  eager  curiosity.  The 
ecclesiastic  looked  intently  at  the  stranger;  unequivocal  anxiety 
was  marked  on  every  feature,  and  his  eyes  offered  an  earnest 
and  even  ardent  prayer. 

"Yes,"  said  the  priest  at  length.  "Return  here  at  midnight, 
and  I  shall  be  ready  to  celebrate  the  only  funeral  service  that 
we  are  able  to  offer  in  expiation  of  the  crime  of  which  you 
speak. " 

The  unknown  shivered;  a  joy  both  sweet  and  solemn  seemed 
to  rise  in  his  soul  above  some  secret  grief.  Respectfully  salut- 
ing the  priest  and  the  two  saintly  women,  he  disappeared  with  a 
mute  gratitude  which  these  generous  souls  knew  well  how  to 
interpret. 

Two  hours  later  the  stranger  returned,  knocked  cautiously  at 
the  door  of  the  garret,  and  was  admitted  by  Mademoiselle  de 
Langeais,  who  led  him  to  the  inner  chamber  of  the  humble 
refuge,  where  all  was  in  readiness  fo.r  the  ceremony.  Between 
two  flues  of  the  chimney  the  nuns  had  placed  the  old  chest  of 
drawers,  whose  broken  edges  were  concealed  by  a  magnificent 
altar-cloth  of  green  moire.  A  large  ebony  and  ivory  crucifix 
hanging  on  the  discolored  wall  stood  out  in  strong  relief  from  the 
surrounding  bareness,  and  necessarily  caught  the  eye.  Four  slen- 
der little  tapers,  which  the  sisters  had  contrived  to  fasten  to  the 
altar  with  sealing-wax,  threw  a  pale  glimmer  dimly  reflected  by 
the  yellow  wall.  These  feeble  rays  scarcely  lit  up  the  rest  of  the 
chamber,  but  as  their  light  fell  upon  the  sacred  objects  it  seemed 
a  halo  falling  from  heaven  upon  the  bare  and  undecorated  altar. 

The  floor  was  damp.  The  attic  roof,  which  sloped  sharply  on 
both  sides  of  the  room,  was  full  of  chinks  through  which  the 
wind  penetrated.  Nothing  could  be  less  stately,  yet  nothing 
was  ever  more  solemn  than  this  lugubrious  ceremony.  Silence 
so  deep  that  some  far-distant  cry  could  have  pierced  it,  lent  a 
sombre  majesty  to  the  nocturnal  scene.  The  grandeur  of  the 
III— 88 


1294  HONORE   DE   BALZAC 

occasion  contrasted  vividly  with  the  poverty  of  its  circumstances, 
and  roused  a  feeling  of  religious  terror.  On  either  side  of  the 
altar  the  old  nuns,  kneeling  on  the  tiled  floor  and  taking  no 
thought  of  its  mortal  dampness,  were  praying  in  concert  with 
the  priest,  who,  robed  in  his  pontifical  vestments,  placed  upon 
the  altar  a  golden  chalice  incrusted  with  precious  stones,  —  a 
sacred  vessel  rescued,  no  doubt,  from  the  pillage  of  the  Abbaye 
des  Chelles.  Close  to  this  vase,  which  was  a  gift  of  royal  munifi- 
cence,  the  bread  and  wine  of  the  consecrated  sacrifice  were  con- 
tained in  two  glass  tumblers  scarcely  worthy  of  the  meanest 
tavern.  In  default  of  a  missal  the  priest  had  placed  his  breviary 
on  a  corner  of  the  altar.  A  common  earthenware  platter  was 
provided  for  the  washing  of  those  innocent  hands,  pure  and 
unspotted  with  blood.  All  was  majestic  and  yet  paltry;  poor  but 
noble;  profane  and  holy  in  one. 

The  unknown  man  knelt  piously  between  the  sisters.  Sud- 
denly, as  he  caught  sight  of  the  crape  upon  the  chalice  and  the 
crucifix, — for  in  default  of  other  means  of  proclaiming  the  object 
of  this  funeral  rite  the  priest  had  put  God  himself  into  mourn- 
ing,—  the  mysterious  visitant  was  seized  by  some  all-powerful 
recollection,  and  drops  of  sweat  gathered  on  his  brow.  The  four 
silent  actors  in  this  scene  looked  at  each  other  with  mysterious 
sympathy;  their  souls,  acting  one  upon  another,  communicated 
to  each  the  feelings  of  all,  blending  them  into  the  one  emotion  of 
religious  pity.  It  seemed  as  though  their  thought  had  evoked 
from  the  dead  the  sacred  .martyr  whose  body  was  devoured  by 
quicklime,  but  whose  shade  rose  up  before  them  in  royal  maj- 
esty. They  were  celebrating  a  funeral  Mass  without  the  remains 
of  the  deceased.  Beneath  these  rafters  and  disjointed  laths  four 
Christian  souls  were  interceding  with  God  for  a  king  of  France, 
and  making  his  burial  without  a  coffin.  It  was  the  purest  of  all 
devotions;  an  act  of  wonderful  loyalty  accomplished  without  one 
thought  of  self.  Doubtless  in  the  eyes  of  God  it  was  the  cup  of 
cold  water  that  weighed  in  the  balance  against  many  virtues. 
The  whole  of  monarchy  was  there  in  the  prayers  of  the  priest 
and  the  two  poor  women;  but  also  it  may  have  been  that  the 
Revolution  was  present  likewise,  in  the  person  of  the  strange 
being  whose  face  betrayed  the  remorse  that  led  him  to  make  this 
solemn  offering  of  a  vast  repentance. 

Instead  of  pronouncing  the  Latin  words,  "  Introibo  ad  altare 
Dei,*^  etc.,  the  priest,  with  divine  intuition,  glanced  at  his  three 
assistants,    who    represented- all    Christian    France,    and    said,    in 


HONORE  DE   BALZAC  Ijc^^ 

words  which  effaced  the  penury  and  meanness  of  the  hovel,  "We 
enter  now  into  the  sanctuary  of  God. '^ 

At  these  words,  uttered  with  penetrating  unction,  a  solemn 
awe  seized  the  participants.  Beneath  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's  in 
Rome,  God  had  never  seemed  more  majestic  to  man  than  he  did 
now  in  this  refuge  of  poverty  and  to  the  eyes  of  these  Chris- 
tians,—  so  true  is  it  that  between  man  and  God  all  mediation  is 
unneeded,  for  his  glory  descends  from  himself  alone.  The  fer- 
vent piety  of  the  nameless  man  was  unfeigned,  and  the  feeling 
that  held  these  four  servants  of  God  and  the  king  was  unani- 
mous. The  sacred  words  echoed  like  celestial  music  amid  the 
silence.  There  was  a  moment  when  the  unknown  broke  down 
and  wept:  it  was  at  the  Pater  Noster,  to  which  the  priest  added 
a  Latin  clause  which  the  stranger  doubtless  comprehended  and 
applied,  —  **  Et  remitte  scelus  regicidis  sicut  Ludovicus  eis  remisit 
semetipse "  (And  forgive  the  regicides  even  as  Louis  XVL  him- 
self forgave  them).  The  two  nuns  saw  the  tears  coursing  down 
the  manly  cheeks  of  their  visitant,  and  dropping  fast  on  the  tiled 
floor. 

The  Office  of  the  Dead  was  recited.  The  "  Domine  salvum 
fac  regem,"  sung  in  low  tones,  touched  the  hearts  of  these  faith- 
ful royalists  as  they  thought  of  the  infant  king,  now  captive  in 
the  hands  of  his  enemies,  for  whom  this  prayer  was  offered.  The 
unknown  shuddered;  perhaps  he  feared  an  impending  crime  in 
which  he  woiild  be  called  to  take  an  unwilling  part. 

When  the  service  was  over,  the  priest  made  a  sign  to  the 
nuns,  who  withdrew  to  the  outer  room.  As  soon  as  he  was  alone 
with  the  unknown,  the  old  man  went  up  to  him  with  gentle  sad- 
ness of  manner,  and  said  in  the  tone  of  a  father,  — 

"  My  son,  if  you  have  steeped  your  hands  in  the  blood  of  the 
martyr  king,  confess  yourself  to  me.  There  is  no  crime  which, 
in  the  eyes  of  God,  is  not  washed  out  by  a  repentance  as  deep 
and  sincere  as  yours  appears  to  be.'* 

At  the  first  words  of  the  ecclesiastic  an  involuntary  motion  of 
terror  escaped  the  stranger;  but  he  quickly  recovered  himself, 
and  looked  at  the  astonished  priest  with  calm  assurance. 

"  My  father,  '*  he  said,  in  a  voice  that  nevertheless  trembled, 
*no  one  is  more  innocent  than  I  of  the  blood  shed  —  ** 

"  I  believe  it !  '*  said  the  priest. 

He  paused  a  moment,  during  which  he  examined  afresh  his 
penitent;  then,  persisting  in  the  belief  that  he  was  one  of  those 


1396 


HONORfi   DE   BALZAC 


timid  members  of  the  Assembly  who  sacrificed  the  inviolate  and 
sacred  head  to  save   their  own,  he  resumed  in  a  grave  voice:  — 

"  Reflect,  my  son,  that  something  more  than  taking  no  part 
in  that  great  crime  is  needed  to  absolve  from  guilt.  Those  who 
kept  their  sword  in  the  scabbard  when  they  might  have  defended 
their  king  have  a  heavy  account  to  render  to  the  King  of  kings. 
Oh,  yes,^^  added  the  venerable  man,  moving  his  head  from  right 
to  left  with  an  expressive  motion;  ^'yes,  heavy,  indeed!  for,  stand- 
ing idle,  they  made  themselves  the  accomplices  of  a  horrible 
transgression.  ^* 

"  Do  you  believe,  '*  asked  the  stranger,  in  a  surprised  tone, 
"that  even  an  indirect  participation  will  be  punished?  The  sol- 
dier ordered  to  form  the  line  —  do  you  think  he  was  guilty?  >> 

The  priest  hesitated.  Glad  of  the  dilemma  that  placed  this 
puritan  of  royalty  between  the  dogma  of  passive  obedience,  which 
according  to  the  partisans  of  monarchy  should  dominate  the  mil- 
itary system,  and  the  other  dogma,  equally  imperative,  which 
consecrates  the  person,  of  the  king,  the  stranger  hastened  to 
accept  the  hesitation  of  the  priest  as  a  solution  of  the  doubts 
that  seemed  to  trouble  him.  Then,  so  as  not  to  allow  the  old 
Jansenist  time  for  further  reflection,  he  said  quickly:  — 

'^  I  should  blush  to  offer  you  any  fee  whatever  in  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  funeral  service  you  have  just  celebrated  for  the 
repose  of  the  king's  soul  and  for  the  discharge  of  my  conscience. 
We  can  only  pay  for  inestimable  things  by  oflferings  which  are 
likewise  beyond  all  price.  Deign  to  accept,  Monsieur,  the  gift 
which  I  now  make  to  you  of  a  holy  relic;  the  day  may  come 
when  you  w'C  know  its  value.'* 

As  he  said  these  words  he  gave  the  ecclesiastic  a  little  box 
of  light  weight.  The  priest  took  it  as  it  were  involuntarily;  for 
the  solemn  tone  in  which  the  words  were  uttered,  and  the  awe 
with  which  the  stranger  held  the  box,  struck  him  with  fresh 
amazement.  They  re-entered  the  outer  room,  where  the  two 
nuns  were  waiting  for  them. 

"You  are  living,**  said  the  tmknown,  "in  a  house  whose 
owner,  Mucins  Scaevola,  the  plasterer  who  lives  on  the  first  floor, 
is  noted  in  the  Section  for  his  patriotism.  He  is,  however, 
secretly  attached  to  the  Bourbons.  He  was  formerly  huntsman 
to  Monseigneur  the  Prince  de  Conti,  to  whom  he  owes  every- 
thing. As  long  as  you  stay  in  this  house  you  are  in  greater 
safety   than   you  can  be  in  any   other   part   of   France.      Remain 


HONORS   DE   BALZAC  1397 

here.  Pious  souls  will  watch  over  you  and  supply  your  wants; 
and  you  can  await  without  danger  the  coming  of  better  days.  A 
year  hence,  on  the  21st  of  January**  (as  he  uttered  these  last 
words  he  could  not  repress  an  involuntary  shudder),  "I  shall 
return  to  celebrate  once  more  the  Mass  of  expiation  —  ** 

He  could  not  end  the  sentence.  Bowing  to  the  silent  occu-^ 
pants  of  the  garret,  he  cast  a  last  look  iipon  the  signs  of  their 
poverty  and  disappeared. 

To  the  two  simple-minded  women  this  event  had  all  the  inter- 
est  of  a  romance.  As  soon  as  the  venerable  abbe  told  them  of 
the  mysterious  gift  so .  solemnly  offered  by  the  stranger,  they 
placed  the  box  upon  the  table,  and  the  three  anxious  faces,  faintly 
lighted  by  a  tallow-candle,  betrayed  an  indescribable  curiosity. 
Mademoiselle  de  Langeais  opened  the  box  and  took  from  it  a 
handkerchief  of  extreme  fineness,  stained  with  sweat.  As  she 
unfolded  it  they  saw  dark  stains. 

"  That  is  blood !  **  exclaimed  the  priest, 

**  It  is  marked  with  the  royal  crown !  **  cried  the  other  nun. 

The  sisters  let  fall  the  precious  relic  with  gestures  of  horror. 
To  these  ingenuous  souls  the  mystery  that  wrapped  their  unknown 
visitor  became  inexplicable,  and  the  priest  from  that  day  forth 
forbade  himself  to  search  for  its  solution. 

The  three  prisoners  soon  perceived  that,  in  spite  of  the 
Terror,  a  powerful  arm  was  stretched  over  them.  First,  they 
received  firewood  and  provisions;  next,  the  sisters  guessed  that  a 
woman  was  associated  with  their  protector,  for  linen  and  cloth- 
ing came  to  them  mysteriously,  and  enabled  them  to  go  out 
without  danger  of  observation  from  the  aristocratic  fashion  of 
the  only  garments  they  had  been  able  to  secure;  finally.  Mucins 
Scsevola  brought  them  certificates  of  citizenship.  Advice  as  to 
the  necessary  means  of  insuring  the  safety  of  the  venerable 
priest  often  came  to  them  from  unexpected  quarters,  and  proved 
so  singularly  opportune  that  it  was  quite  evident  it  could  only 
have  been  given  by  some  one  in  possession  of  state  secrets.  In 
spite  of  the  famine  which  then  afflicted  Paris,  they  foimd  daily 
at  the  door  of  their  hovel  rations  of  white  bread,  laid  there 
by  invisible  hands.  They  thought  they  recognized  in  Mucins 
Scaevola  the  agent  of  these  mysterious  benefactions,  which  were 
always  timely  and  intelligent;  but  the  noble  occupants  of  the 
poor  g-arret  had  no  doubt  whatever  that  the  unknown  individua] 


1398 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC 


who  had  celebrated  the  midnight  Mass  on  the  2  2d  of  January, 
1793,  was  their  secret  protector.  They  added  to  their  daily 
prayers  a  special  prayer  for  him;  night  and  day  these  pious 
hearts  made  supplication  for  his  happiness,  his  prosperity,  his 
redemption.  They  prayed  that  God  would  keep  his  feet  from 
snares  and  save  him  from  his  enemies,  and  grant  him  a  long 
and  peaceful  life. 

Their  gratitude,  renewed  as  it  were  daily,  was  necessarily 
mingled  with  curiosity  that  grew  keener  day  by  day.  The  cir- 
cumstances attending  the  appearance  of  the  stranger  were  a 
ceaseless  topic  of  conversation  and  of  endless  conjecture,  and 
soon  became  a  benefit  of  a  special  kind,  from  the  occupation 
and  distraction  of  mind  which  was  thus  produced.  They  resolved 
that  the  stranger  should  not  be  allowed  to  escape  the  expression 
of  their  gratitude  when  he  came  to  commemorate  the  next  sad 
anniversary  of  the  death  of  Louis  XVI. 

That  night,  so  impatiently  awaited,  came  at  length.  At  mid- 
night the  heavy  steps  resounded  up  the  wooden  stairway.  The 
room  was  prepared  for  the  service;  the  altar  was  dressed.  This 
time  the  sisters  opened  the  door  and  hastened  to  light  the 
entrance.  Mademoiselle  de  Langeais  even  went  down  a  few  stairs 
that  she  might  catch  the  first  glimpse  of  their  benefactor. 

"  Come !  ^'  she  said,  in  a  trembling  and  affectionate  voice. 
*^  Come,  you  are  expected !  ** 

The  man  raised  his  head,  gave  the  nun  a  gloomy  look,  and 
made  no  answer.  She  felt  as  though  an  icy  garment  had  fallen 
upon  her,  and  she  kept  silence.  At  his  aspect  gratitude  and 
curiosity  died  within  their  hearts.  He  may  have  been  less  cold, 
less  taciturn,  less  terrible  than  he  seemed  to  these  poor  souls, 
whose  own  emotions  led  them  to  expect  a  flow  of  friendship 
from  his.  They  saw  that  this  mysterious  being  was  resolved  to 
remain  a  stranger  to  them,  and  they  acquiesced  with  resignation. 
But  the  priest  fancied  he  saw  a  smile,  quickly  repressed,  upon 
the  stranger's  lip  as  he  saw  the  preparations  made  to  receive 
him.  He  heard  the  Mass  and  prayed,  but  immediately  disap- 
peared, refusing  in  a  few  courteous  words  the  invitation  given 
by  Mademoiselle  de  Langeais  to  remain  and  partake  of  the 
humble  collation  they  had  prepared  for  him. 

After  the  9th  Thermidor  the  nuns  and  the  Abb^  de  Marolles 
were  able  to  go  about  Paris  without  incurring  any  danger.  The 
first  visit  of  the  old  priest  was  to  a  perfumery  at  the  sign  of  the 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC  i^qq 

^* Queen  of  Flowers,**  kept  by  the  citizen  and  citoyenne  Ragon, 
formerly  perfumers  to  the  Court,  well  known  for  their  faithful- 
ness to  the  royal  family,  and  employed  by  the  Vendeens  as  a 
channel  of  communication  with  the  princes  and  royal  committees 
in  Paris.  The  abbe,  dressed  as  the  times  required,  was  leaving 
the  doorstep  of  the  shop,  situated  between  the  church  of  Saint- 
Roch  and  the  Rue  des  Fondeurs,  when  a  great  crowd  coming 
down  the  Rue  Saint-Honore  hindered  him  from  advancing. 

^*  What  is  it  ?  '*  he  asked  of  Madame  Ragon. 

"Oh,  tiothing!**  she  answered.  "It  is  the  cart  and  the  exe- 
cutioner going  to  the  Place  Louis  XV.  Ah,  we  saw  enough  of 
that  last  year!  but  now,  four  days  after  the  anniversary  of  the 
2 1  St  of  January,  we  can  look  at  the  horrid  procession  without 
distress.  ** 

"  Why  so  ?  **  asked  the  abbe.  "  What  you  say  is  not  Chris- 
tian. ** 

"  But  this  is  the  execution  of  the  accomplices  of  Robespierre. 
They  have  fought  it  off  as  long  as  they  could,  but  now  they 
are  going  in  their  turn  where  they  have  sent  so  many  innocent 
people.** 

The  crowd  which  filled  the  Rue  Saint-Honore  passed  on  like 
a  wave.  Above  the  sea  of  heads  the  Abbe  de  Marolles,  yielding 
to  an  impulse,  saw,  standing  erect  in  the  cart,  the  stranger  who 
three  days  before  had  assisted  for  the  second  time  in  the  Mass 
of  commemoration. 

"Who  is  that?**  he  asked;  "the  one  standing — ** 

"  That  is  the  executioner,  **  answered  Monsieur  Ragon,  calling 
the  man  by  his  monarchical  name. 

"  Help !  help !  **  cried  Madame  Ragon.  "  Monsieur  I'Abbe  is 
fainting !  ** 

She  caught  up  a  flask  of  vinegar  and  brought  him  quickly 
back  to  consciousness. 

"He  must  have  given  me,**  said  the  old  priest,  "the  handker- 
chief with  which  the  king  wiped  his  brow  as  he  went  to  his 
martyrdom.  Poor  man!  that  steel  knife  had  a  heart  when  all 
France  had  none  !  ** 

The  perfumers  thought  the  words  of  the  priest  were  an  effect 
of  delirmm.  Translation  copyrighted  by  Roberts  Brothers. 


l^oo  HONORE   DE   BALZAC 

A    PASSION    IN    THE    DESERT 
Copyright  1885,  by  Roberts  Brothers 

«  r-pHE  sight  was  fearful!*^    she  exclaimed,  as  we  left  the  mena- 
I       gerie  of  Monsieur  Martin. 

She  had  been  watching  that  daring   speculator  as  he  went 
through  his  wonderful  performance  in  the  den  of  the  hyena. 

^^  How  is  it  possible,'*  she  continued,  "to  tame  those  animals 
so  as  to  be  certain  that  he  can  trust  them  ? " 

"You  think  it  a  problem,'*  I  answered,  interrupting  her, 
*  and  yet  it  is  a  natural  fact.  '* 

"  Oh !  **  she  cried,  an  incredulous  smile  flickering  on  her  lip. 

"  Do  you  think  that  beasts  are  devoid  of  passions  ?  *'  I  asked 
"  Let  me  assure  you  that  we  teach  them  all  the  vices  and  vir- 
tues of  our  own  state  of  civilization.** 

She  looked  at  me  in  amazement. 

"The  first  time  I  saw  Monsieur  Martin,**  I  added,  "I  ex- 
claitned,  as  you  do,  with  surprise.  I  happened  to  be  sitting 
beside  an  old  soldier  whose  right  leg  was  amputated,  and  whose 
appearance  had  attracted  my  notice  as  I  entered  the  building. 
His  face,  stamped  with  the  scars  of  battle,  wore  the  undaunted 
look  of  a  veteran  of  the  wars  of  Napoleon.  Moreover,  the  old 
hero  had  a  frank  and  joyous  manner  which  attracts  me  wherever 
I  meet  it.  He  was  doubtless  one  of  those  old  campaigners 
whom  nothing  can  surprise,  who  find  something  to  laugh  at  in 
the  last  contortions  of  a  comrade,  and  will  bury  a  friend  or  rifle 
his  body  gayly;  challenging  bullets  with  indifference;  making 
short  shrift  for  themselves  or  others;  and  fraternizing,  as  a 
usual  thing,  with  the  devil.  After  looking  very  attentively  at 
the  proprietor  of  the  menagerie  as  he  entered  the  den,  my  com- 
panion curled  his  lip  with  that  expression  of  satirical  contempt 
which  well-informed  men  sometimes  put  on  to  mark  the  differ- 
ence between  themselves  and  dupes.  As  I  uttered  my  exclama- 
tion of  surprise  at  the  coolness  and  courage  of  Monsieur  Martin, 
the  old  soldier  smiled,  shook  his  head,  and  said  with  a  knowing 
glance,   *  An  old  story!* 

"  *  How  do  you  mean  an  old  story  ?  *  I  asked.  *  If  you  could 
explain  the  secret  of  this  mysterious  power,  I  should  be  greatly 
obliged  to  you.* 

"After  a  while,  during  which  we  became  better  acquainted, 
we  went  to  dine  at  the  first  cafe  we  could  find  after  leaving  the 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC  I4OI 

menagerie.  A  bottle  of  champagne  with  our  dessert  brightened 
the  old  man's  recollections  and  made  them  singularly  vivid. 
He  related  to  me  a  circumstance  in  his  early  history  which 
proved  that  he  had  ample  cause  to  pronounce  Monsieur  Martin's 
performance  ^  an  old  story.  ^  '* 

When  we  reached  her  house,  she  was  so  persuasive  and  cap- 
tivating, and  made  me  so  many  pretty  promises,  that  I  consented 
to  write  down  for  her  benefit  the  story  told  me  by  the  old  hero. 
On  the  following  day  I  sent  her  this  episode  of  a  historical  epic, 
which  might  be  entitled,   <  The  French  in  Egypt.* 


At  the  time  of  General  Desaix's  expedition  to  Upper  Egypt  a 
Provencal  soldier,  who  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  Mau- 
grabins,  was  marched  by  those  tireless  Arabs  across  the  desert 
which  lies  beyond  the  cataracts  of  the  Nile.  To  put  sufiQcient 
distance  between  themselves  and  the  French  army,  the  Maugra- 
bins  made  a  forced  march  and  did  not  halt  until  after  nightfall. 
They  then  camped  about  a  well  shaded  with  palm-trees,  near 
which  they  had  previously  buried  a  stock  of  provisions.  Not 
dreaming  that  the  thought  of  escape  could  enter  their  captive's 
mind,  they  merely  bound  his  wrists,  and  lay  down  to  sleep 
themselves,  after  eating  a  few  dates  and  giving  their  horses  a 
feed  of  barley.  When  the  bold  Provengal  saw  his  enemies  too 
soundly  asleep  to  watch  him,  he  used  his  teeth  to  pick  up  a 
scimitar,  with  which,  steadying  the  blade  by  means  of  his  knees, 
he  contrived  to  cut  through  the  cord  which  bound  his  hands, 
and  thus  recovered  his  liberty.  He  at  once  seized  a  carbine  and 
a  poniard,  took  the  precaution  to  lay  in  a  supply  of  dates,  a 
small  bag  of  barley,  some  powder  and  ball,  buckled  on  the 
scimitar,  mounted  one  of  the  horses,  and  spurred  him  in  the 
direction  where  he  supposed  the  French  army  to  be.  Impatient 
to  meet  the  outposts,  he  pressed  the  horse,  which  was  already 
wearied,  so  severely  that  the  poor  animal  fell  dead  with  his 
flanks  torn,  leaving  the  Frenchman  alone  in  the  midst  of  the 
desert. 

After  marching  for  a  long  time  through  the  sand  with  the 
dogged  courage  of  an  escaping  galley-slave,  the  soldier  was 
forced  to  halt,  as  darkness  drew  on:  for  his  utter  weariness 
compelled  him  to  rest,  though  the  exquisite  sky  of  an  eastern 
night    might    well    have    tempted    him    to    continue    the    journey. 


1^02  H0N0R6   DE   BALZAC 

Happily  he  had  reached  a  slight  elevation,  at  the  top  of  which 
a  few  palm-trees  shot  upward,  whose  leafage,  seen  from  a  long 
distance  against  the  sky,  had  helped  to  sustain  his  hopes.  His 
fatigiie  was  so  great  that  he  threw  himself  down  on  a  block  of 
granite,  cut  by  Nature  into  the  shape  of  a  camp-bed,  and  slept 
heavily,  without  taking  the  least  precaution  to  protect  himself 
while  asleep.  He  accepted  the  loss  of  his  life  as  inevitable,  and 
his  last  waking  thought  was  one  of  regret  for  having  left  the 
Maugrabins,  w'hose  nomad  life  began  to  charm  him  now  that  he 
was  far  away  from  them  and  from  every  other  hope  of  succor. 

He  was  awakened  by  the  sun,  whose  pitiless  beams  falling 
vertically  upon  the  granite  rock  produced  an  intolerable  heat. 
The  Provencal  had  ignorantly  flung  himself  down  in  a  contrary 
direction  to  the  shadows  thrown  by  the  verdant  and  majestic 
fronds  of  the  palm-trees.  He  gazed  at  these  solitary  monarchs 
and  shuddered.  They  recalled  to  his  mind  the  graceful  shafts, 
crowned  with  long  weaving  leaves,  which  distinguish  the  Sara- 
cenic columns  of  the  cathedral  of  Aries.  The  thoiight  overcame 
him,  and  when,  after  counting  the  trees,  he  threw  his  eyes  upon 
the  scene  around  him,  an  agony  of  despair  convulsed  his  soul. 
He  saw  a  limitless  ocean.  The  sombre  sands  of  the  desert 
stretched  out  till  lost  to  sight  in  all  directions;  they  glittered 
with  dark  lustre  like  a  steel  blade  shining  in  the  sun.  He  could 
not  tell  if  it  were  an  ocean  or  a  chain  of  lakes  that  lay  mirrored 
before  him.  A  hot  vapor  swept  in  waves  above  the  surface  of 
this  heaving  continent.  The  sky  had  the  Oriental  glow  of  trans- 
lucent purity,  which  disappoints  because  it  leaves  nothing  for 
the  imagination  to  desire.  The  heavens  and  the  earth  were  both 
on  fire.  Silence  added  its  awful  and  desolate  majesty.  Infini- 
tude, immensity  pressed  down  upon  the  soul  on  every  side;  not 
a  cloud  in  the  sky,  not  a  breath  in  the  air,  not  a  rift  on  the 
breast  of  the  sand,  which  was  ruffled  only  with  little  ridges 
scarcely  rising  above  its  surface.  Far  as  the  eye  could  reach  the 
horizon  fell  away  into  space,  marked  by  a  slender  line,  slim  as 
the  edge  of  a  sabre,— like  as  in  summer  seas  a  thread  of  light 
parts  this  earth  from  the  heaven  it  meets. 

The  Provengal  clasped  the  trunk  of  a  palm-tree  as  if  it  were 
the  body  of  a  friend.  Sheltered  from  the  sun  by  its  straight 
and  slender  shadow,  he  wept;  and  presently  sitting  down  he 
remained  motionless,  contemplating  with  awful  dread  the  implac- 
able   Nature  stretched  out  before  him.      He  cried  aloud,  as  if  to 


HONOR:^  DE   BALZAC  I403 

Lempt  the  solitude  to  answer  him.  His  voice,  lost  in  the  hollows 
of  the  hillock,  sounded  afar  with  a  thin  resonance  that  returned 
no  echo;  the  echo  came  from  the  soldier's  heart.  He  was  twenty- 
two  years  old,  and  he  loaded  his  carbine, 

«  Time  enough !  *'  he  muttered,  as  he  put  the  liberating  weapon 
on  the  sand  beneath  him. 

Gazing  by  turns  at  the  burnished  blackness  of  the  sand  and 
the  blue  expanse  of  the  sky,  the  soldier  dreamed  of  France. 
He  smelt  in  fancy  the  glitters  of  Paris;  he  remembered  the  towns 
through  which  he  had  passed,  the  faces  of  his  comrades,  and  the 
most  trifling  incidents  of  his  life.  His  southern  imagination  saw 
the  pebbles  of  his  own  Provence  in  the  undulating  play  of  the 
heated  air,  as  it  seemed  to  roughen  the  far-reaching  surface  of 
the  desert.  Dreading  the  dangers  of  this  cruel  mirage,  he  went 
down  the  little  hill  on  the  side  opposite  to  that  by  which  he 
had  gone  up  the  night  before.  His  joy  was  great  when  he 
discovered  a  natural  grotto,  formed  by  the  immense  blocks  of 
granite  which  made  a  foundation  for  the  rising  grotmd.  The 
remnants  of  a  mat  showed  that  the  place  had  once  been  inhab- 
ited, and  close  to  the  entrance  were  a  few  palm-trees  loaded 
with  fruit.  The  instinct  which  binds  men  to  life  woke  in  his 
heart.  He  now  hoped  to  live  until  some  Maugrabin  should  pass 
that  way;  possibly  he  might  even  hear  the  roar  of  cannon,  for 
Bonaparte  was  at  that  time  overrunning  Egypt.  Encouraged  by 
these  thoughts,  the  Frenchman  shook  down  a  cluster  of  the  ripe 
fruit  under  the  weight  of  which  the  palms  were  bending;  and  as 
he  tasted  this  unhoped-for  manna,  he  thanked  the  former  inhab- 
itant of  the  grotto  for  the  cultivation  of  the  trees,  which  the  rich 
and  luscious  flesh  of  the  fruit  amply  attested.  Like  a  true  Pro- 
vencal, he  passed  from  the  gloom  of  despair  to  a  joy  that  was 
half  insane.  He  ran  back  to  the  top  of  the  hill,  and  busied 
himself  for  the  rest  of  the  day  in  cutting  down  one  of  the  sterile 
trees  which  had  been  his  shelter  the  night  before. 

Some  vague  recollection  made  him  think  of  the  wild  beasts 
of  the  desert,  and  foreseeing  that  they  would  come  to  drink  at  a 
spring  which  bubbled  through  the  sand  at  the  foot  of  the  rock, 
he  resolved  to  protect  his  hermitage  by  felling  a  tree  across  the 
entrance.  Notwithstanding  his  eagerness,  and  the  strength  which 
the  fear  of  being  attacked  while  asleep  gave  to  his  muscles,  he 
was  unable  to  cut  the  palm-tree  in  pieces  during  the  day;  but 
he   succeeded   in   bringing  it  down.      Towards  evening  the  king 


I404  HONORE   DE   BALZAC 

of  the  desert  fell;  and  the  noise  of  his  fall,  echoing-  far,  was 
like  a  moan  from  the  breast  of  Solitude.  The  soldier  shuddered, 
as  though  he  had  heard  a  voice  predicting-  evil.  But,  like  an 
heir  who  does  not  long  mourn  a  parent,  he  stripped  from  the 
beautiful  tree  the  arching  green  fronds  —  its  poetical  adorn- 
ment—  and  made  a  bed  of  them  in  his  refuge.  Then,  tired 
with  his  work  and  by  the  heat  of  the  day,  he  fell  asleep  beneath 
the  red  vault  of  the  grotto. 

In  the  middle  of  the  night  his  sleep  was  broken  by  a  strange 
noise.  He  sat  up;  the  deep  silence  that  reigned  everywhere 
enabled  him  to  hear  the  alternating  rhythm  of  a  respiration 
whose  savage  vigor  could  not  belong-  to  a  human  being.  A  ter- 
rible fear,  increased  by  the  darkness,  by  the  silence,  by  the 
rush  of  his  waking  fancies,  numbed  his  heart.  He  felt  the  con- 
traction of  his  hair,  which  rose  on  end  as  his  eyes,  dilating  to 
their  full  strength,  beheld  through  the  darkness  two  faint  amber 
lights.  At  first  he  thought  them  an  optical  delusion;  but  by 
degrees  the  clearness  of  the  night  enabled  him  to  distinguish 
objects  in  the  grotto,  and  he  saw,  within  two  feet  of  him,  an 
enormous  animal  lying  at  rest. 

Was  it  a  lion  ?  Was  it  a  tiger  ?  Was  it  a  crocodile  ?  The 
Provencal  had  not  enough  education  to  know  in  what  sub-species 
he  ought  to  class  the  intruder;  but  his  terror  was  all  the  greater 
because  his  ignorance  made  it  vague.  He  endured  the  cruel 
trial  of  listening,  of  striving  to  catch  the  peculiarties  of  this 
breathing  without  losing  one  of  its  inflections,  and  without  daring 
to  make  the  slightest  movement.  A  strong  odor,  like  that 
exhaled  by  foxes,  only  far  more  pungent  and  penetrating,  filled 
the  grotto.  When  the  soldier  had  tasted  it,  so  to  speak,  by  the 
nose,  his  fear  became  terror;  he  could  no  longer  doubt  the 
nature  of  the  terrible  companion  whose  royal  lair  he  had  taken 
for  a  bivouac.  Before  long,  the  reflection  of  the  moon,  as  it 
sank  to  the  horizon,  lighted  up  the  den  and  gleamed  upon  the 
shining,  spotted  skin  of  a  panther. 

The  lion  of  Egypt  lay  asleep,  curled  up  like  a  dog,  the  peace 
able  possessor  of  a  kennel  at  the  gate  of  a  mansion;  its  eyes, 
which  had  opened  for  a  moment,  were  now  closed;  its  head  was 
turned  towards  the  Frenchman.  A  hundred  conflicting  thoughts 
rushed  through  the  mind  of  the  panther's  prisoner.  Should  he 
kill  it  with  a  shot  from  his  musket  ?  But  ere  the  thought  was 
formed,   he  s^.w   there   was   no    room    to    take   aim;    the   muzzle 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC 


1405 


woiild  have  gone  beyond  the  animal.  Suppose  he  were  to  wake 
it  ?  The  fear  kept  him  motionless.  As  he  heard  the  beating  of 
his  heart  through  the  dead  silence,  he  cursed  the  strong  pulsa- 
tions of  his  vigorous  blood,  lest  they  should  disturb  the  sleep 
which  gave  him  time  to  think  and  plan  for  safety.  Twice  he 
put  his  hand  on  his  scimitar,  with  the  idea  of  striking  off  the 
head  of  his  enemy;  but  the  difficulty  of  cutting  through  the 
close-haired  skin  made  him  renounce  the  bold  attempt.  Suppose 
he  missed  his  aim  ?  It  would,  he  knew,  be  certain  death.  He 
preferred  the  chances  of  a  struggle,  and  resolved  to  await  the 
dawn.  It  was  not  long  in  coming.  As  daylight  broke,  the 
Frenchman  was  able  to  examine  the  animal.  Its  muzzle  was 
stained  with  blood.  *^  It  has  eaten  a  good  meal,"  thought  he, 
not  caring  whether  the  feast  were  human  flesh  or  not;  "it  will 
not  be  hungry  when   it  wakes." 

It  was  a  female.  The  fur  on  the  belly  and  on  the  thighs  was 
of  sparkling  whiteness.  Several  little  spots  like  velvet  made  pretty 
bracelets  round  her  paws.  The  muscular  tail  was  also  white, 
but  it  terminated  with  black  rings.  The  fur  of  the  back,  yel- 
low as  dead  gold  and  very  soft  and  glossy,  bore  the  characteristic 
spots,  shaded  like  a  full-blown  rose,  which  distinguish  the  pan- 
ther from  all  other  species  of  fclis.  This  terrible  hostess  lay 
tranquilly  snoring,  in  an  attitude  as  easy  and  graceful  as  that  of 
a  cat  on  the  cushions  of  an  ottoman.  Her  bloody  paws,  sinewy 
and  well-armed,  were  stretched  beyond  her  head,  which  lay 
upon  them;  and  from  her  muzzle  projected  a  few  straight  hairs 
called  whiskers,  which  shimmered  in  the  early  light  like  silver 
wires. 

If  he  had  seen  her  lying  thus  imprisoned  in  a  cage,  the  Pro- 
vencal would  have  admired  the  creature's  grace,  and  the  strong 
contrasts  of  vivid  color  which  gave  to  her  robe  an  imperial  splen- 
dor; but  as  it  was,  his  sight  was  jaundiced  by  sinister  forebod- 
ings. The  presence  of  the  panther,  though  she  was  still  asleep, 
had  the  same  effect  upon  his  mind  as  the  magnetic  eyes  of  a 
snake  produce,  we  are  told,  upon  the  nightingale.  The  soldier's 
courage  oozed  away  in  presence  of  this  silent  peril,  though  he 
was  a  man  who  gathered  nerve  before  the  mouths  of  cannon 
belching  grape-shot.  And  yet,  ere  long,  a  bold  thought  entered 
his  mind,  and  checked  the  cold  sweat  which  was  rolling  from 
his  brow.  Roused  to  action,  as  some  men  are  when,  driven  face 
to   face   with    death,    they    defy   it   and   offer   themselves   to   theii 


I4o6  HONORE   DE   BALZAC 

doom,  he  saw  a  tragedy  before  him,  and  he  resolved  to  play  his 
part  with  honor  to  the  last. 

^'Yesterday,"  he  said,   ^*  the  Arabs  might  have  killed  me.'' 

Regarding  himself  as  dead,  he  waited  bravely,  but  with 
anxious  curiosity,  for  the  waking  of  his  enemy.  When  the  sun 
rose,  the  panther  suddenly  opened  her  eyes;  then  she  stretched 
her  paws  violently,  as  if  to  unlimber  them  from  the  cramp  of 
their  position.  Presently  she  yawned  and  showed  the  frightful 
armament  of  her  teeth,  and  her  cloven  tongue,  rough  as  a  grater. 

''  She  is  like  a  dainty  woman, ''  thought  the  Frenchman,  watch- 
ing her  as  she  rolled  and  turned  on  her  side  with  an  easy  and 
coquettish  movement.  She  licked  the  blood  from  her  paws,  and 
rubbed  her  head  with  a  reiterated  movement  full  of  grace. 

*^  Well  done !  dress  yourself  prettily,  my  little  woman, ''  said 
the  Frenchman,  who  recovered  his  gayety  as  soon  as  he  had 
recovered  his  courage.  **  We  are  going  to  bid  each  other  good- 
morning;''  and  he  felt  for  the  short  poniard  which  he  had  taken 
from  the  Maugrabins. 

At  this  instant  the  panther  turned  her  head  towards  the 
Frenchman  and  looked  at  him  fixedly,  without  moving.  The 
rigidity  of  her  metallic  eyes  and  their  insupportable  clearness 
made  the  Provengal  shudder.  The  beast  moved  towards  him ;  he 
looked  at  her  caressingly,  with  a  soothing  glance  by  which  he 
hoped  to  magnetize  her.  He  let  her  come  quite  close  to  him 
before  he  stirred;  then  with  a  touch  as  gentle  and  loving  as  he 
might  have  used  to  a  pretty  woman,  he  slid  his  hand  along  her 
spine  from  the  head  to  the  flanks,  scratching  with  his  nails  the 
flexible  vertebrae  which  divide  the  yellow  back  of  a  panther. 
The  creature  drew  up  her  tail  voluptuously,  her  eyes  softened, 
and  when  for  the  third  time  the  Frenchman  bestowed  this  self- 
interested  caress,  she  gave  vent  to  a  purr  like  that  with  which  a 
cat  expresses  pleasure:  but  it  issued  from  a  throat  so  deep  and 
powerful  that  the  sound  echoed  through  the  grotto  like  the  last 
chords  of  an  organ  rolling  along  the  roof  of  a  church.  The  Pro- 
vengal,  perceiving  the  value  of  his  caresses,  redoubled  them 
until  they  had  completely  soothed  and  lulled  the  imperious 
courtesan. 

When  he  felt  that  he  had  subdued  the  ferocity  of  his  capri- 
cious companion,  whose  hunger  had  so  fortunately  been  appeased 
the  night  before,  he'  rose  to  leave  the  grotto.  The  panther  let 
him  go;  but  as  soon  as  he  reached  the  top  of  the  little  hill   she 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC  1407 

bounded  after  him  with  the  hghtness  of  a  bird  hopping  from 
branch  to  branch,  and  rubbed  against  his  legs,  arching  her  back 
with  the  gesture  of  a  domestic  cat.  Then  looking  at  her  guest 
with  an  eye  that  was  growing  less  inflexible,  she  uttered  the 
savage  cry  which  naturalists  liken  to  the  noise  of  a  saw. 

<*  My  lady  is  exacting,  '^  cried  the  Frenchman,  smiling.  He 
began  to  play  with  her  ears  and  stroke  her  belly,  and  at  last  he 
scratched  her  head  firmly  with  his  nails.  Encouraged  by  success, 
he  tickled  her  skull  with  the  point  of  his  dagger,  looking  for  the 
right  spot  where  to  stab  her;  but  the  hardness  of  the  bone  made 
him  pause,   dreading  failure. 

The  sultana  of  the  desert  acknowledged  the  talents  of  her 
slave  by  lifting  her  head  and  swaying  her  neck  to  his  caresses, 
betraying  satisfaction  by  the  tranquillity  of  her  relaxed  attitude. 
The  Frenchman  suddenly  perceived  that  he  could  assassinate  the 
fierce  princess  at  a  blow,  if  he  struck  her  in  the  throat;  and  he 
had  raised  the  weapon,  when  the  panther,  surfeited  perhaps  with 
his  caresses,  threw  herself  gracefully  at  his  feet,  glancing  up  at 
him  with  a  look  in  which,  despite  her  natural  ferocity,  a  flicker 
of  kindness  could  be  seen.  The  poor  Provencal,  frustrated  for 
the  moment,  ate  his  dates  as  he  leaned  against  a  palm-tree,  cast- 
ing from  time  to  time  an  interrogating  eye  across  the  desert  in 
the  hope  of  discerning  rescue  from  afar,  and  then  lowering  it 
upon  his  terrible  companion,  to  watch  the  chances  of  her  uncer- 
tain clemency.  Each  time  that  he  threw  away  a  date-stone  the 
panther  eyed  the  spot  where  it  fell  with  an  expression  of  keen 
distrust;  and  she  examined  the  Frenchman  with  what  might  be 
called  commercial  prudence.  The  examination,  however,  seemed 
favorable,  for  when  the  man  had  finished  his  meagre  meal  she 
licked  his  shoes  and  wiped  off  the  dust,  which  was  caked  into 
the  folds  of  the  leather,  with  her  rough  and  powerful  tongue. 

"  How  will  it  be  when  she  is  hungry  ?  *'  thought  the  Proven- 
gal.  In  spite  of  the  shudder  which  this  reflection  cost  him,  his 
attention  was  attracted  by  the  symmetrical  proportions  of  the 
animal,  and  he  began  to  measure  them  with  his  eye.  She  was 
three  feet  in  height  to  the  slioulder,  and  four  feet  long,  not  in- 
cluding the  tail.  That  powerful  weapon,  which  was  round  as  a 
club,  measured  three  feet.  The  head,  as  large  as  that  of  a  lion- 
ess, was  remarkable  for  an  expression  of  crafty  intelligence;  the 
cold  cruelty  of  a  tiger  was  its  ruling  trait,  and  yet  it  bore  a 
vague    resemblance    to    the    face    of   an    artful    woman.      As    the 


1408 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC 


soldier  watched  her,  the  countenance  of  this  solitary  queen  shone 
with  savag-e  gfayety  like  that  of  Nero  in  his  cups:  she  had  slaked 
her  thirst  for  blood,  and  now  wished  for  play.  The  Frenchman 
tried  to  come  and  g'o,  and  accustomed  her  to  his  movements. 
The  panther  left  him  free,  as  if  contented  to  follow  him  with 
her  eyes,  seeming,  however,  less  like  a  faithful  dog  watching  his 
master's  movements  with  affection,  than  a  huge  Angora  cat  un- 
easy and  suspicious  of  them.  A  few  steps  brought  him  to  the 
spring,  where  he  saw  the  carcass  of  his  horse,  which  the  panther 
liad  evidently  carried  there.  Only  two-thirds  was  eaten.  The 
sight  reassured  the  Frenchman;  for  it  explained  the  absence  of 
his  terrible  companion  and  the  forbearance  which  she  had  shown 
to  him  while  asleep. 

This  first  good  luck  encouraged  the  reckless  soldier  as  he 
thought  of  the  future.  The  wild  idea  of  making  a  home  with 
the  panther  until  some  chance  of  escape  occurred  entered  his 
mind,  and  he  resolved  to  try  every  means  of  taming  her  and 
of  turning  her  good-will  to  account.  With  these  thoughts  he 
returned  to  her  side,  and  noticed  joyfully  that  she  moved  her  tail 
with  an  almost  imperceptible  motion.  He  sat  down  beside  her 
fearlessly,  and  they  began  to  play  with  each  other.  He  held 
her  paws  and  her  muzzle,  twisted  her  ears,  threw  her  over  on 
her  back,  and  stroked  her  soft  warm  flanks.  She  allowed  him 
to  do  so;  and  when  he  began  to  smooth  the  fur  of  her  paws, 
she  carefully  drew  in  her  murderous  claws,  which  were  sharp  and 
curved  like  a  Damascus  blade.  The  Frenchman  kept  one  hand 
on  his  dagger,  again  watching  his  opportunity  to  plunge  it  into 
the  belly  of  the  too-confiding  beast;  but  the  fear  that  she  might 
strangle  him  in  her  last  convulsions  once  more  stayed  his  hand. 
Moreover,  he  felt  in  his  heart  a  foreboding  of  a  remorse  which 
warned  him  not  to  destroy  a  hitherto  inoffensive  creature.  He 
even  fancied  that  he  had  found  a  friend  in  the  limitless  desert. 
His  mind  turned  back,  involuntarily,  to  his  first  mistress,  whom 
he  had  named  in  derision  "Mignonne,'*  because  her  jealousy  was 
so  furious  that  throughout  the  whole  period  of  their  intercourse 
he  lived  in  dread  of  the  knife  with  which  she  threatened  him. 
This  recollection  of  his  youth  suggested  the  idea  of  teaching  the 
young  panther,  whose  soft  agility  and  grace  he  now  admired 
with  less  terror,  to  answer  to  the  caressing  name.  Towards 
evening  he  had  grown  so  familiar  with  his  perilous  position  that 
he  was  half  in  love  with  its  dangers,  and  his  companion  was  so 


HONORE   DE  BALZAC  1409 

far  tamed  that  she  had  caught  the  habit  of  turning  to  him  when 
he  called,  in  falsetto  tones,   **  Mignonne ! " 

As  the  sun  went  down  Mignonne  uttered  at  intervals  a  pro- 
longed,  deep,  melancholy  cry. 

^'  She  is  well  brought  up,  **  thought  the  gay  soldier.  "  She 
says  her  prayers.'^  But  the  jest  only  came  into  his  mind  as  he 
watched  the  peaceful  attitude  of  his  comrade. 

"Come,  my  pretty  blonde,  I  will  let  you  go  to  bed  first," 
he  said,  relying  on  the  activity  of  his  legs  to  get  away  as  soon 
as  she  fell  asleep,  and  trusting  to  find  some  other  resting-place 
for  the  night.  He  waited  anxiously  for  the  right  moment,  and 
when  it  came  he  started  vigorously  in  the  direction  of  the  Nile. 
But  he  had  scarcely  marched  for  half  an  hour  through  the  sand 
before  he  heard  the  panther  bounding  after  him,  giving  at  inter- 
vals the  saw-like  cry  which  was  more  terrible  to  hear  than  the 
thud  of  her  bounds. 

"  Well,  well !  ^^  he  cried,  "  she  must  have  fallen  in  love  with 
me !  Perhaps  she  has  never  met  any  one  else.  It  is  flattering 
to  be  her  first  love.'^ 

So  thinking,  he  fell  into  one  of  the  treacherous  quicksands 
which  deceive  the  inexperienced  traveler  in  the  desert,  and  from 
which  there  is  seldom  any  escape.  He  felt  he  was  sinking,  and 
he  uttered  a  cry  of  despair.  The  panther  seized  him  by  the 
collar  with  her  teeth,  and  sprang  vigorously  backward,  drawing 
him,  like  magic,  from  the  sucking  sand. 

"  Ah,  Mignonne !  '*  cried  the  soldier,  kissing  her  with  enthu- 
siasm, "  we  belong  to  each  other  now, —  for  life,  for  death !  But 
play  me  no  tricks,**  he  added,  as  he  turned  back  the  way  he 
came. 

From  that  moment  the  desert  was,  as  it  were,  peopled  for 
him.  It  held  a  being  to  whom  he  could  talk,  and  whose  ferocity 
was  now  lulled  into  gentleness,  although  he  could  scarcely  ex- 
plain to  himself  the  reasons  for  this  extraordinary  friendship. 
His  anxiety  to  keep  awake  and  on  his  guard  succumbed  to  ex- 
cessive weariness  both  of  body  and  mind,  and  throwing  himself 
down  on  the  floor  of  the  grotto  he  slept  soundly.  At  his 
waking  Mignonne  was  gone.  He  mounted  the  little  hill  to 
scan  the  horizon,  and  perceived  her  in  the  far  distance  return- 
ing with  the  long  bounds  peculiar  to  these  animals,  who  are 
prevented  from  running  by  the  extreme  flexibility  of  their  spinal 
column. 

Ill — 8q 


j.jQ  HONORfi   DE  BALZAC 

Mignonne  came  home  with  bloody  jaws,  and  received  the 
tribute  of  caresses  which  her  slave  hastened  to  pay,  all  the  while 
manifesting  her  pleasure  by  reiterated  purring. 

Her  eyes,  now  soft  and  gentle,  rested  kindly  on  the  Proven- 
gal,  who  spoke  to  her  lovingly  as  he  would  to  a  domestic  animal. 
"Ah!  Mademoiselle, —  for  you  are  an  honest  girl,  are  you  not? 
You  like  to  be  petted,  don't  you  ?  Are  you  not  ashamed  of 
yourself  ?  You  have  been  eating  a  Maugrabin.  Well,  well !  they 
are  animals  like  the  rest  of  you.  But  you  are  not  to  craunch  up 
a  Frenchman;    remember  that!     If   you  do,   I  will  not  love  you.*' 

She  played  like  a  young  dog  with  her  master,  and  let  him 
roll  her  over  and  pat  ^nd  stroke  her,  and  sometimes  she  would 
coax  him  to  play  by  laying  a  paw  upon  his  knee  with  a  pretty 
soliciting  gesture. 

Several  days  passed  rapidly.  This  strange  companionship 
revealed  to  the  Provencal  the  sublime  beauties  of  the  desert. 
The  alternations  of  hope  and  fear,  the  sufficiency  of  food,  the 
presence  of  a  creature  who  occupied  his  thoughts, —  all  this  kept 
his  mind  alert,  yet  free:  it  was  a  life  full  of  strange  contrasts. 
Solitude  revealed  to  him  her  secrets,  and  wrapped  him  with  her 
charm.  In  the  rising  and  the  setting  of  the  sun  he  saw  splendors 
unknown  to  the  world  of  men.  He  quivered  as  he  listened  to 
the  soft  whirring  of  the  wings  of  a  bird, — rare  visitant!  —  or 
watched  the  blending  of  the  fleeting  clouds, —  those  changeful 
and  many-tinted  voyagers.  In  the  waking  hours  of  the  night 
he  studied  the  play  of  the  moon  upon  the  sandy  ocean,  where 
the  strong  simoom  had  rippled  the  surface  into  waves  and  ever- 
varying  undulations.  He  lived  in  the  Eastern  day;  he  worshiped 
its  marvelous  glory.  He  rejoiced  in  the  grandeur  of  the  storms 
when  they  rolled  across  the  vast  plain,  and  tossed  the  sand 
upward  till  it  looked  like  a  dry  red  fog  or  a  solid  death-dealing 
vapor;  and  as  the  night  came  on  he  welcomed  it  with  ecstasy, 
grateful  for  the  blessed  coolness  of  the  light  of  the  stars.  His 
ears  listened  to  the  music  of  the  skies.  Solitude  taught  him  the 
treasures  of  meditation.  He  spent  hours  in  recalling  trifles,  and 
in  comparing  his  past  life  with  the  weird  present. 

He  grew  fondly  attached  to  his  panther;  for  he  was  a  man 
who  needed  an  affection.  Whether  it  were  that  his  own  will, 
magnetically  strong,  had  modified  the  nature  of  his  savage  princess, 
or  that  the  wars  then  raging  in  the  desert  had  provided  her  with 
an  ample  supply  of  food,  it  is  certain  that  she  showed  no  sign  of 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC  I4II 

attacking  him,  and  became  so  tame  that  he  soon  felt  no  fear  of 
her.  He  spent  much  of  his  time  in  sleeping;  though  with  his 
mind  awake,  like  a  spider  in  its  web,  lest  he  should  miss  some 
deliverance  that  might  chance  to  cross  the  sandy  sphere  marked 
out  by  the  horizon.  He  had  made  his  shirt  into  a  banner  and 
tied  it  to  the  top  of  a  palm-tree  which  he  had  stripped  of  its 
leafage.  Taking  counsel  of  necessity,  he  kept  the  flag  extended 
by  fastening  the  corners  with  twigs  and  wedges;  for  the  fitful 
wind  might  have  failed  to  wave  it  at  the  moment  when  the 
longed-for  succor  came  in  sight. 

Nevertheless,  there  were  long  hours  of  gloom  when  hope  for- 
sook him;  and  then  he  played  with  his  panther.  He  learned  to 
know  the  different  inflections  of  her  voice  and  the  meanings  of 
her  expressive  glance;  he  studied  the  variegation  of  the  spots 
which  shaded  the  dead  gold  of  her  robe.  Mignonne  no  longer 
gi'owled  when  he  caught  the  tuft  of  her  dangerous  tail  and 
counted  the  black  and  white  rings  which  glittered  in  the  sunlight 
like  a  cluster  of  precious  stones.  He  delighted  in  the  soft  lines 
of  her  lithe  body,  the  whiteness  of  her  belly,  the  grace  of  her 
charming  head:  but  above  all  he  loved  to  watch  her  as  she 
gamboled  at  play.  The  agility  and  youthfulness  of  her  move- 
ments were  a  constantly  fresh  surprise  to  him.  He  admired  the 
suppleness  of  the  flexible  body  as  she  bounded,  crept,  and  glided, 
or  clung  to  the  trunk  of  palm-trees,  or  rolled  over  and  over, 
crouching  sometimes  to  the  ground,  and  gathering  herself  together 
as  she  made  ready  for  her  vigorous  spring.  Yet,  however  vig- 
orous the  bound,  however  slippery  the  granite  block  on  which 
she  landed,  she  would  stop  short,  motionless,  at  the  one  word 
"  Mignonne.^* 

One  day,  under  a  dazzling  sun,  a  large  bird  hovered  in  the 
sky.  The  Provencal  left  his  panther  to  watch  the  new  guest. 
After  a  moment's  pause  the  neglected  sultana  uttered  a  low  growl. 

"The  devil  take  me!  I  believe  she  is  jealous!'*  exclaimed  the 
soldier,  observing  the  rigid  look  which  once  more  appeared  in  her 
metallic  eyes.      "  The  soul  of  Sophronie  has  got  into  her   body !  * 

The  eagle  disappeared  in  ether,  and  the  Frenchman,  recalled 
by  the  panther's  displeasure,  admired  afresh  her  rounded  flanks 
and  the  perfect  grace  of  her  attitude.  She  was  as  pretty  as  a 
woman.  The  blonde  brightness  of  her  robe  shaded,  with  delicate 
gradations,  to  the  dead-white  tones  of  her  furry  thighs;  the  vivid 
guhshine   brought   out   the   brilliancy   of   this   living   gold  and   its 


1 41 2  HONORfi   DE   BALZAC 

varieg'atcd  brown  spots  with  indescribable  lustre.  The  panther 
and  the  Provengal  gazed  at  each  other  with  human  comprehen- 
sion. She  trembled  with  delight  —  the  coquettish  creature!  —  as 
she  felt  the  nails  of  her  friend  scratching  the  strong  bones  of  her 
skull.  Her  eyes  glittered  like  flashes  of  lightning,  and  then  she 
closed  them  tightly. 

"  She  has  a  soul !  '*  cried  the  soldier,  watching  the  tranquil  repose 
of  this  sovereign  of  the  desert,  golden  as  the  sands,  white  as  their 
pulsing  light,  solitary  and  burning  as  they. 


*Well,'^  she  said,  *^  I  have  read  your  defense  of  the  beasts.  But 
tell  me  what  was  the  end  of  this  friendship  between  two  beings 
so  formed  to  imderstand  each  other  ?  ^* 

*^  Ah,  exactly,  ^*  I  replied.  **  It  ended  as  all  great  passions  end, 
— by  a  misunderstanding.  Both  sides  imagine  treachery,  pride 
prevents  an  explanation,  and  the  rupture  comes  about  through 
obstinacy.  * 

"  Yes, "  she  said,  "  and  sometimes  a  word,  a  look,  an  exclama- 
tion suffices.     But  tell  me  the  end  of  the  story.** 

^'That  is  difficult,**  I  answered.  "But  I  will  give  it  to  you  in 
the  words  of  the  old  veteran,  as  he  finished  the  bottle  of  cham- 
pagne and  exclaimed:  — 

**  <  I  don't  know  how  I  could  have  hurt  her,  but  she  suddenly 
turned  upon  me  as  if  in  fury,  and  seized  my  thigh  with  her 
sharp  teeth;  and  yet  (as  I  afterwards  remembered)  not  cruelly. 
I  thought  she  meant  to  devour  me,  and  I  plunged  my  dagger 
into  her  throat.  She  rolled  over  with  a  cry  that  froze  my  soul; 
she  looked  at  me  in  her  death  struggle,  but  without  anger. 
I  would  have  given  all  the  world  —  my  cross,  which  I  had 
not  then  gained,  all,  everything  —  to  have  brought  her  back 
to  life.  It  was  as  if  I  had  murdered  a  friend,  a  human  being. 
When  the  soldiers  who  saw  my  flag  came  to  my  rescue  they 
foimd  me  weeping.  Monsieur,*  he  resumed,  after  a  moment's 
silence,  ^  I  went  through  the  wars  in  Germany,  Spain,  Russia, 
France;  I  have  marched  my  carcass  well-nigh  over  all  the  world; 
but  I  have  seen  nothing  comparable  to  the  desert.  Ah,  it  is 
grand !  glorious !  * 

<*  *■  What  were  your  feelings  there  ?  *  I  asked. 

**  *■  They  cannot  be  told,  young  man.  Besides,  I  do  not  always 
regret  my  panther  and  my  palm-tree  oasis:    I  must  be  very  sad 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC 


I413 


for  that.  But  I  will  tell  you  this:  in  the  desert  there  is  all  — 
and  yet  nothing.' 

«  <  Stay !  —  explain  that. ' 

«<Well,  then,'  he  said,  with  a  gesture  of  impatience,  *God  is 
there,  and  man  is  not.''* 


THE  NAPOLEON  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

From  <  The  Country  Doctor  > 

«r-pHE  genius  of  a  Colbert  or  of  a  Sully  avails  nothing »  [said 
I  Benassis]  <*  unless  it  is  supported  by  the  energetic  will  that 
makes  a  Napoleon  or  a  Cromwell.  A  great  minister,  gen- 
tlemen, is  a  great  thought  written  at  large  over  all  the  years  of 
a  century  of  prosperity  and  splendor  for  which  he  has  prepared 
the  way.  Steadfast  perseverance  is  the  virtue  of  which  he  stands 
most  in  need;  and  in  all  human  affairs  does  not  steadfast  perse- 
verance indicate  a  power  of  the  very  highest  order  ?  We  have 
had  for  some  time  past  too  many  men  who  think  only  of  the 
ministry  instead  of  the  nation,  so  that  we  cannot  but  admire  the 
real  statesman  as  the  vastest  human  Poetry.  Ever  to  look  beyond 
the  present  moment,  to  foresee  the  ways  of  Destiny,  to  care  so 
little  for  power  that  he  only  retains  it  because  he  is  conscious 
of  his  usefulness,  while  he  does  not  overestimate  his  strength; 
ever  to  lay  aside  all  personal  feeling  and  low  ambitions,  so  that 
he  may  always  be  master  of  his  faculties,  and  foresee,  will,  and 
act  without  ceasing;  to  compel  himself  to  be  just  and  impartial, 
to  keep  order  on  a  large  scale,  to  silence  his  heart  that  he  may 
be  guided  by  his  intellect  alone,  to  be  neither  apprehensive  nor 
sanguine,  neither  suspicious  nor  confiding,  neither  grateful  nor 
ungrateful,  never  to  be  unprepared  for  an  event  nor  taken  at 
unawares  by  an  idea:  to  live,  in  fact,  with  the  requirements  of 
the  masses  ever  in  his  mind,  to  spread  the  protecting  wings 
of  his  thought  above  them,  to  sway  them  by  the  thunder  of  his 
voice  and  the  keenness  of  his  glance;  seeing  all  the  while  not 
the  details  of  affairs,  but  the  great  issues  at  stake, — is  not  that 
to  be  something  more  than  a  mere  man  ?  Therefore  the  names 
of  the  great  and  noble  fathers  of  nations  cannot  but  be  house- 
hold words  forever.* 

There    was    silence    for   a   moment,    during   which   the   guests 
looked  at  one  another. 


1414  HONORfi   DE   BALZAC 

**  Gentlemen,  you  have  not  said  a  word  about  the  army !  '*  cried 
Genestas.  "A  military  organization  seems  to  me  to  be  the  real 
type  on  which  all  good  civil  society  should  be  modeled;  the  Sword 
is  the  guardian  of  a  nation.'* 

The  justice  of  the  peace  laughed  softly. 

**  Captain,'*  he  said,  "an  old  lawyer  once  said  that  empires 
began  with  the  sword  and  ended  with  the  desk;  we  have  reached 
the  desk  stage  by  this  time.'* 

**And  now  that  we  have  settled  the  fate  of  the  world,  gentle- 
men, let  us  change  the  subject.  Come,  captain,  a  glass  of  Her- 
mitage," cried  the  doctor  laughing. 

"  Let  us  go  to  my  barn, "  continued  the  doctor.  .  .  .  And 
there.  Captain  Bluteau,  you  will  hear  about  Napoleon.  We  shall 
find  a  few  old  cronies  who  will  set  Goguelat,  the  postman,  to 
declaiming  about  the  people's  god.  Nicolle,  my  stableman,  was 
to  set  up  a  ladder  by  which  we  can  get  into  the  hay-loft  through 
a  window,  and  find  a  place  where  we  can  see  and  hear  all  that 
goes  on.  A  veillde  is  worth  the  trouble,  believe  me.  Come,  it 
isn't  the  first  time  I've  hidden  in  the  hay  to  hear  the  tale  of  a 
soldier  or  some  peasant  yarn.  But  we  must  hide:  if  these  poor 
people  see  a  stranger  they  are  constrained  at  once,  and  are  no 
longer  their  natural  selves.* 

"Eh!  my  dear  host,"  said  Genestas,  "haven't  I  often  pre- 
tended to  sleep,  that  I  might  listen  to  my  troopers  round  a  biv- 
ouac ?  I  never  laughed  more  heartily  in  the  Paris  theatres  than 
I  did  at  an  account  of  the  retreat  from  Moscow,  told  in  fun,  by 
an  old  sergeant  to  a  lot  of  recruits  who  were  afraid  of  war.  He 
declared  the  French  army  slept  in  sheets,  and  drank  its  wine 
well-iced;  that  the  dead  stood  still  in  the  roads;  Russia  was 
white,  they  curried  the  horses  with  their  teeth;  those  who  liked 
to  skate  had  lots  of  fun,  and  those  who  fancied  frozen  puddings 
ate  their  fill;  the  women  were  usually  cold,  and  the  only  thing 
that  was  really  disagreeable  was  the  want  of  hot  water  to  shave 
with:  in  short,  he  recounted  such  absurdities  that  an  old  quarter- 
master, who  had  had  his  nose  frozen  off  and  was  known  by  the 
name  Nez-restant,  laughed  himself." 

"Hush,"  said  Benassis,  "here  we  are:  I'll  go  first;  follow  me." 

The  pair  mounted  the  ladder  and  crouched  in  the  hay, 
without  being  seen  or  heard  by  the  people  below,  and  placed 
themselves  at  ease,  so  that  they  could  see  and  hear  all  that 
went  on.     The  women  were  sitting  in  groups  round  the  three  or 


HONORE   DE  BALZAC 


1415 


four  candles  that  stood  on  the  tables.  Some  were  sewing-,  some 
knitting;  several  sat  idle,  their  necks  stretched  out  and  their 
heads  and  eyes  turned  to  an  old  peasant  who  was  telling  a  story. 
Most  of  the  men  were  standing,  or  lying  on  bales  of  hay. 
These  groups,  all  perfectly  silent,  were  scarcely  visible  in  the 
flickering  glimmer  of  the  tallow-candles  encircled  by  glass  bowls 
full  of  water,  which  concentrated  the  light  in  rays  upon  the 
women  at  work  about  the  tables.  The  size  of  the  barn,  whose 
roof  was  dark  and  sombre,  still  further  obscured  the  rays  of 
light,  which  touched  the  heads  with  unequal  color,  and  brought 
out  picturesque  effects  of  light  and  shade.  Here,  the  brown 
forehead  and  the  clear  eyes  of  an  eager  little  peasant-girl  shone 
forth;  there,  the  rough  brows  of  a  few  old  men  were  sharply 
defined  by  a  luminous  band,  which  made  fantastic  shapes  of 
their  worn  and  discolored  garments.  These  various  listeners,  so 
diverse  in  their  attitudes,  all  expressed  on  their  motionless  feat- 
ures the  absolute  abandonment  of  their  intelligence  to  the  narra- 
tor. It  was  a  curious  picture,  illustrating  the  enormous  influence 
exercised  over  every  class  of  mind  by  poetry.  In  exacting  from 
a  story-teller  the  marvelous  that  must  still  be  simple,  or  the 
impossible  that  is  almost  believable,  the  peasant  proves  himself 
to  be  a  true  lover  of  the  purest  poetry.     ... 

^^  Come,  Monsieur  Goguelat,'^  said  the  game-keeper,  *'tell  us 
about  the  Emperor.*^ 

<^The  evening  is  half  over,*^  said  the  postman,  "and  I  don't 
like  to  shorten  the  victories.'^ 

"Never  mind;  go  on!  You've  told  them  so  many  times  we 
know  them  all  by  heart;  but  it  is  always  a  pleasure  to  hear 
them  again.  ^^ 

"Yes!  tell  us  about  the  Emperor,**  cried  many  voices  together. 

"Since  you  wish  it,**  replied  Goguelat.  "But  you'll  see  it  isn't 
worth  much  when  I  have  to  tell  it  on  the  double -qiiick,  charge! 
I'd  rather  tell  about  a  battle.  Shall  I  tell  about  Champ- Aubert, 
where  we  used  up  all  the  cartridges  and  spitted  the  enemy  on 
our  bayonets  ?  ** 

"  No !  no !  the  Emperor !  the  Emperor !  ** 

The  veteran  rose  from  his  bale  of  hay  and  cast  upon  the 
assemblage  that  black  look  laden  with  miseries,  emergencies,  and 
sufferings,  which  distinguishes  the  faces  of  old  soldiers.  He  seized 
his  jacket  by  the  two  front  flaps,  raised  them  as  if  about  to  pack 
the  knapsack  which  formerly  held  his  clothes,  his  shoes,  and  all 


14l6  HONORS   DE   BALZAC 

his  fortune;  then  he  threw  the  weight  of  his  body  on  his  left 
leg,  advanced  the  right,  and  yielded  with  a  good  grace  to  the 
demands  of  the  company.  After  pushing  his  gray  hair  to  one 
side  to  show  his  forehead,  he  raised  his  head  towards  heaven 
that  he  might,  as  it  were,  put  himself  on  the  level  of  the  gigantic 
history  he  was  about  to  relate. 

**  You  see,  my  friends.  Napoleon  was  bom  in  Corsica,  a  French 
island,  warmed  by  the  sun  of  Italy,  where  it  is  like  a  furnace, 
and  where  the  people  kill  each  other,  from  father  to  son,  all 
about  nothing:  that's  a  way  they  have.  To  begin  with  the  mar- 
vel of  the  thing,  —  his  mother,  who  was  the  handsomest  woman 
of  her  time,  and  a  knowing  one,  bethought  herself  of  dedicating 
him  to  God,  so  that  he  might  escape  the  dangers  of  his  child- 
hood and  future  life;  for  she  had  dreamed  that  the  world  was 
set  on  fire  the  day  he  was  born.  And  indeed  it  was  a  prophecy! 
So  she  asked  God  to  protect  him,  on  condition  that  Napoleon 
should  restore  His  holy  religion,  which  was  then  cast  to  the 
ground.  Well,  that  was  agreed  upon,  and  we  shall  see  what 
came  of  it. 

"  Follow  me  dosely,  and  tell  me  if  what  you  hear  is  in  the 
nature  of  man. 

"  Sure  and  certain  it  is  that  none  but  a  man  who  conceived 
the  idea  of  making  a  compact  with  God  could  have  passed 
unhurt  through  the  enemy's  lines,  through  cannon-balls,  and  dis- 
charges of  grape-shot  that  swept  the  rest  of  us  off  like  flies,  and 
always  respected  his  head.  I  had  a  proof  of  that — I  myself  — 
at  Eylau.  I  see  him  now,  as  he  rode  up  a  height,  took  his 
field  glass,  looked  at  the  battle,  and  said,  *A11  goes  well.^  One 
of  those  plumed  busy-bodies,  who  plagued  him  considerably  and 
followed  him  everywhere,  even  to  his  meals,  so  they  said, 
thought  to  play  the  wag,  and  took  the  Emperor's  place  as  he 
rode  away.  Ho!  in  a  twinkling,  head  and  plume  were  off!  You 
must  understand  that  Napoleon  had  promised  to  keep  the  secret 
of  his  compact  all  to  himself.  That's  why  all  those  who  followed 
him,  even  his  nearest  friends,  fell  like  nuts,  —  Duroc,  Bessieres, 
Lannes,  —  all  strong  as  steel  bars,  though  Jic  could  bend  them  as 
he  pleased.  Besides,  —  to  prove  he  was  the  child  of  God,  and 
made  to  be  the  father  of  soldiers, — was  he  ever  known  to  be 
lieutenant  or  captain  ?  no,  no ;  commander-in-chief  from  the 
start.  He  didn't  look  to  be  more  than  twenty-four  years  of  age 
when  he  was  an  old  general  at  the  taking  of  Toulon,  where  he 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC  1417 

first   beg-an    to    show   the    others    that    they   knew   nothing   about 
manoeuvring  cannon. 

"  After  that,  down  came  our  sHp  of  a  general  to  command 
the  grand  army  of  Italy,  which  hadn't  bread  nor  munitions,  nor 
shoes,  nor  coats, — a  poor  army,  as  naked  as  a  worm.  *  My 
friends,^  said  he,  ^here  we  are  together.  Get  it  into  your  pates 
that  fifteen  days  from  now  you  will  be  conqiierors,  —  new  clothes, 
good  gaiters,  famous  shoes,  and  every  man  with  a  great-coat; 
but,  my  children,  to  get  these  things  you  must  march  to  Milan 
where  they  are.*  And  we  marched.  France,  crushed  as  flat  as 
a  bedbug,  straightened  up.  We  were  thirty  thousand  barefeet 
against  eighty  thousand  Austrian  bullies,  all  fine  men,  well  set  up. 
I  see  'em  now!  But  Napoleon  —  he  was  then  only  Bonaparte  — 
he  knew  how  to  put  the  courage  into  us!  We  marched  by  night, 
and  we  marched  by  day;  we  slapped  their  faces  at  Montenotte, 
we  thrashed  'em  at  Rivoli,  Lodi,  Arcole,  Millesimo,  and  we 
never  let  'em  up.  A  soldier  gets  the  taste  of  conquest.  So 
Napoleon  whirled  round  those  Austrian  generals,  who  didn't 
know  where  to  poke  themselves  to  get  out  of  his  way,  and  he 
pelted  'em  well, — nipped  off  ten  thousand  men  at  a  blow  some- 
times, by  getting  round  them  with  fifteen  hundred  Frenchmen, 
and  then  he  gleaned  as  he  pleased.  He  took  their  cannon,  their 
supplies,  their  money,  their  munitions,  in  short,  all  they  had 
that  was  good  to  take.  He  fought  them  and  beat  them  on  the 
mountains,  he  drove  them  into  the  rivers  and  seas,  he  bit  'em 
in  the  air,  he  devoured  'em  on  the  ground,  and  he  lashed  'em 
everywhere.  Hey!  the  grand  army  feathered  itself  well;  for, 
d'ye  see,  the  Emperor,  who  was  also  a  wit,  called  up  the  inhab- 
itants and  told  them  he  was  there  to  deliver  them.  So  after 
that  the  natives  lodged  and  cherished  us;  the  women  too,  and 
very  judicious  they  were.  Now  here's  the  end  of  it.  In  Ven- 
tose,  '96, — in  those  times  that  was  the  month  of  March  of  to-day, 
—  we  lay  cuddled  in  a  corner  of  Savoy  with  the  marmots;  and 
yet,  before  that  campaign  was  over,  we  were  masters  of  Italy, 
just  as  Napoleon  had  predicted;  and  by  the  following  March  — 
in  a  single  year  and  two  campaigns  —  he  had  brought  us  within 
sight  of  Vienna.  'Twas  a  clean  sweep.  We  devoured  their 
armies,  one  after  the  other,  and  made  an  end  of  four  Austrian 
generals.  One  old  fellow,  with  white  hair,  was  roasted  like  a  rat 
in  the  straw  at  Mantua.  Kings  begged  for  mercy  on  their 
knees!     Peace  was  won. 


141 8  HONORfi   DE  BALZAC 

"Could  a  })ian  have  done  that?  No;  God  helped  him,  to  a 
certainty  I 

"  He  divided  himself  up  like  the  loaves  in  the  Gospel,  com- 
manded the  battle  by  day,  planned  it  by  night;  going  and  com- 
ing, for  the  sentinels  saw  him, — never  eating,  never  sleeping. 
So,  seeing  these  prodigies,  the  soldiers  adopted  him  for  their 
father.  Forward,  march!  Then  those  others,  the  rulers  in  Paris, 
seeing  this,  said  to  themselves:  —  *  Here's  a  bold  one  that  seems 
to  get  his  orders  from  the  skies;  he's  likely  to  put  his  paw  on 
France.  We  must  let  him  loose  on  Asia;  we  will  send  him  to 
America,  perhaps  that  will  satisfy  hini.^  But  'twas  written 
above  for  him,  as  it  was  for  Jesus  Christ.  The  command  went 
forth  that  he  should  go  to  Egypt.  See  again  his  resemblance 
to  the  Son  of  God.  But  that's  not  all.  He  called  together  his 
best  veterans,  his  fire-eaters,  the  ones  he  had  particularly  put 
the  devil  into,  and  he  said  to  them  like  this:  —  ^  My  friends, 
they  have  given  us  Egypt  to  chew  up,  just  to  keep  us  busy,  but 
we'll  swallow  it  whole  in  a  couple  of  campaigns,  as  we  did  Italy. 
The  common  soldiers  shall  be  princes  and  have  the  land  for 
their  own.  Forward,  march !  ^  ^  Forward,  march ! '  cried  the 
sergeants,  and  there  we  were  at  Toulon,  road  to  Egypt.  At 
that  time  the  English  had  all  their  ships  in  the  sea;  but  when 
we  embarked  Napoleon  said,  ^  They  won't  see  us.  It  is  just  as 
well  that  you  should  know  from  this  time  forth  that  your  gen- 
eral has  got  his  star  in  the  sk}^  which  guides  and  protects  us.* 
What  was  said  was  done.  Passing  over  the  sea,  we  took  Malta 
like  an  orange,  just  to  quench  his  thirst  for  victory;  for  he  was 
a  man  who  couldn't  live  and  do  nothing. 

**  So  here  we  are  in  Egypt.  Good.  Once  here,  other  orders. 
The  Egyptians,  d'ye  see,  are  men  who,  ever  since  the  earth 
was,  have  had  giants  for  sovereigns,  and  armies  as  numerous 
as  ants;  for,  you  must  understand,  that's  the  land  of  genii  and 
crocodiles,  where  they've  built  pyramids  as  big  as  our  mountains, 
and  buried  their  kings  imder  them  to  keep  them  fresh, —  an  idea 
that  pleased  'em  mightily.  So  then,  after  we  disembarked,  the 
Little  Corporal  said  to  us,  *  My  children,  the  country  you  are 
going  to  conquer  has  a  lot  of  gods  that  you  must  respect; 
because  Frenchmen  ought  to  be  friends  with  everybody,  and 
fight  the  nations  without  vexing  the  inhabitants.  Get  it  into 
your  skulls  that  you  are  not  to  touch  anything  at  first,  for  it  is 
all  going  to  be  yours  soon.     Forward,  march !  *     So  far,  so  good. 


HONORE  DE  BALZAC  1419 

But  all  those  people  of  Africa,  to  whom  Napoleon  was  foretold 
under  the  name  of  K6bir-Bonaberdis, —  a  word  of  their  lingo 
that  means  Hhe  sultan  fires,*  —  were  afraid  as  the  devil  of  him. 
So  the  Grand  Turk,  and  Asi-a,  and  Africa,  had  recourse  to 
magic.  They  sent  us  a  demon,  named  the  Mahdi,  supposed  to 
have  descended  from  heaven  on  a  white  horse,  which,  like  its 
master,  was  bullet-proof;  and  both  of  them  lived  on  air,  without 
food  to  support  them.  There  are  some  that  say  they  saw  them; 
but  I  can't  give  you  any  reasons  ,to  make  you  certain  about 
that.  The  rulers  of  Arabia  and  the  Mamelukes  tried  to  make 
their  troopers  believe  that  the  Mahdi  could  keep  them  from 
perishing  in  battle;  and  they  pretended  he  was  an  angel  sent 
from  heaven  to  fight  Napoleon  and  get  back  Solomon's  seal. 
Solomon's  seal  was  part  of  their  paraphernalia  which  they  vowed 
our  General  had  stolen.  You  must  understand  that  we'd  given 
'em  a  good  many  wry  faces,  in  spite  of  what  he  had   said  to  us. 

*^Now,  tell  me  how  they  knew  that  Napoleon  had  a  pact  with 
God  ?     Was  that  natural,  d'ye  think  ? 

"  They  held  to  it  in  their  minds  that  Napoleon  commanded 
the  genii,  and  could  pass  hither  and  thither  in  the  twinkling  of 
an  eye,  like  a  bird.  The  fact  is,  he  was  everywhere.  At  last,  it 
came  to  his  carrying  off  a  queen,  beautiful  as  the  dawn,  for 
whom  he  had  offered  all  his  treasure,  and  diamonds  as  big  as 
pigeons'  eggs,  —  a  bargain  which  the  Mameluke  to  whom  she  par- 
ticularly belonged  positively  refused,  although  he  had  several 
others.  Such  matters,  when  they  come  to  that  pass,  can't  be 
settled  without  a  great  many  battles;  and,  indeed,  there  was  no 
scarcity  of  battles;  there  was  fighting  enough  to  please  every- 
body. We  were  in  line  at  Alexandria,  at  Gizeh,  and  before  the 
Pyramids;  we  marched  in  the  sun  and  through  the  sand,  where 
some,  who  had  the  dazzles,  saw  water  that  they  couldn't  drink, 
and  shade  where  their  flesh  was  roasted.  But  we  made  short 
work  of  the  Mamelukes;  and  everybody  else  yielded  at  the  voice 
of  Napoleon,  who  took  possession  of  Upper  and  Lower  Egypt, 
Arabia,  and  even  the  capitals  of  kingdoms  that  were  no  more, 
where  there  were  thousand  of  statues  and  all  the  plagues  of 
Egypt,  more  particularly  lizards,  —  a  mammoth  of  a  country 
where  everybody  could  take  his  acres  of  land  for  as  little  as  he 
pleased.  Well,  while  Napoleon  was  busy  with  his  affairs  inland, 
—  where  he  had  it  in  his  head  to  do  fine  things,  —  the  English 
burned  his  fleet  at  Aboukir;    for  they  were  always  looking  about 


I420  HONORE   DE   BALZAC 

them  to  annoy  lis.  But  Napoleon,  who  had  the  respect  of  the 
East  and  of  the  West,  whom  the  Pope  called  his  son,  and  the 
cousin  of  Mohammed  called  ^  his  dear  father,*  resolved  to  punish 
England,  and  get  hold  of  India  in  exchange  for  his  fleet.  He 
was  just  about  to  take  us  across  the  Red  Sea  into  Asia,  a  coun- 
try where  there  are  diamonds  and  gold  to  pay  the  soldiers  and 
palaces  for  bivouacs,  when  the  Mahdi  made  a  treaty  with  the 
Plague,  and  sent  it  down  to  hinder  our  victories.  Halt!  The 
army  to  a  man  defiled  at  that  parade;  and  few  there  were  who 
came  back  on  their  feet.  Dying  soldiers  couldn't  take  Saint-Jean 
d'Acre,  though  they  rushed  at  it  three  times  with  generous  and 
martial  obstinacy.  The  Plague  was  the  strongest.  No  saying  to 
that  enemy,  *  My  good  friend.  *  Every  soldier  lay  ill.  Napoleon 
alone  was  fresh  as  a  rose,  and  the  whole  army  saw  him  drinking 
in  pestilence  without  its  doing  him  a  bit  of  harm. 

"Ha!  my  friends!  will  you  tell  me  that  that's  in  the  nature 
of  a  mere  man  ? 

"  The  Mamelukes  knowing  we  were  all  in  the  ambulances, 
thought  they  could  stop  the  way;  but  that  sort  of  joke  wouldn't 
do  with  Napoleon.  So  he  said  to  his  deinons,  his  veterans,  those 
that  had  the  toughest  hide,  ^  Go,  clear  me  the  way.  *  Jimot,  a 
sabre  of  the  first  cut,  and  his  particular  friend,  took  a  thousand 
men,  no  more,  and  ripped  up  the  army  of  the  pacha  who  had 
had  the  presumption  to  put  himself  in  the  way.  After  that,  we 
came  back  to  headquarters  at  Cairo.  Now,  here's  another  side 
of  the  story.  Napoleon  absent,  France  was  letting  herself  be 
ruined  by  the  rulers  in  Paris,  who  kept  back  the  pay  of  the 
soldiers  of  the  other  armies,  and  their  clothing,  and  their  rations; 
left  them  to  die  of  hunger,  and  expected  them  to  lay  down  the 
law  to  the  universe  without  taking  any  trouble  to  help  them. 
Idiots!  who  amused  themselves  by  chattering,  instead  of  putting 
their  own  hands  in  the  dough.  Well,  that's  how  it  happened 
that  our  armies  were  beaten,  and  the  frontiers  of  France  were 
encroached  upon:  The  Man  was  not  there.  Now  observe,  I  say 
man  because  that's  what  they  called  him;  but  'twas  nonsense, 
for  he  had  a  star  and  all  its  belongings;  it  was  we  who  were 
only  men.  He  taught  history  to  France  after  his  famous  battle 
of  Aboukir,  where,  without  losing  more  than  three  hundred  men, 
and  with  a  single  division,  he  vanquished  the  grand  army  of  the 
Turk,  seventy-five  thousand  strong,  and  hustled  more  than  half 
of  it  into  the  sea,  r-r-rah' 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC  142  I 

"  That  was  his  last  thunder-clap  in  Eofypt.  He  said  to  him- 
self, seeing  the  way  things  were  going  in  Paris,  ^  I  am  the  savior 
of  France.  I  know  it,  and  I  must  go.*  But,  understand  me,  the 
army  didn't  know  he  was  going,  or  they'd  have  kept  him  by 
force  and  made  him  Emperor  of  the  East.  So  now  we  were 
sad;  for  He  was  gone  who  was  all  our  joy.  He  left  the  com- 
mand to  Kleber,  a  big  mastiff,  who  came  off  duty  at  Cairo, 
assassinated  by  an  Egyptian,  whom  they  put  to  death  by  impaling 
him  on  a  bayonet;  that's  the  way  they  guillotine  people  down 
there.  But  it  makes  'em  suffer  so  much  that  a  soldier  had  pity 
on  the  criminal  and  gave  him  his  canteen;  and  then,  as  soon  as 
the  Egyptian  had  drunk  his  fill,  he  gave  up  the  ghost  with  all 
the  pleasure  in  life.  But  that's  a  trifle  we  couldn't  laugh  at 
then.  Napoleon  embarked  in  a  cockleshell,  a  little  skiff  that 
was  nothing  at.  all,  though  'twas  called  ^Fortune*;  and  in  a 
twinkling,  under  the  nose  of  England,  who  was  blockading  him 
with  ships  of  the  line,  frigates,  and  anything  that  could  hoist 
a  sail,  he  crossed  over,  and  there  he  was  in  France.  For  he 
always  had  the  power,  mind  you,  of  crossing  the  seas  at  one 
straddle. 

^^Was  that  a  human  man?     Bah  I 

^^  So,  one  minute  he  is  at  Frejus,  the  next  in  Paris.  There, 
they  all  adore  him;  but  he  summons  the  government.  ^What 
have  you  done  with  my  children,  the  soldiers  ?  *  he  says  to  the 
lawyers.  ^You're  a  mob  of  rascally  scribblers;  you  are  making 
France  a  mess  of  pottage,  and  snapping  your  fingers  at  what 
people  think  of  you.  It  won't  do;  and  I  speak  the  opinion  of 
everybody.*  So,  on  that,  they  wanted  to  battle  with  him  and  kill 
him  —  click!  he  had  'em  locked  up  in  barracks,  or  flying  out  of 
windows,  or  drafted  among  his  followers,  where  they  were  as 
mute  as  fishes,  and  as  pliable  as  a  quid  of  tobacco.  After  that 
stroke  —  consul!  And  then,  as  it  was  not  for  him  to  doubt  the 
Supreme  Being,  he  fulfilled  his  promise  to  the  good  God,  who,  you 
see,  had  kept  His  word  to  him.  He  gave  Him  back  his  churches, 
and  re-established  His  religion;  the  bells  rang  for  God  and  for 
him :  and  lo !  everybody  was  pleased :  primo^  the  priests,  whom  he 
saved  from  being  harassed;  sccnitdo,  the  bourgeois,  who  thought 
only  of  their  trade,  and  no  longer  had  to  fear  the  rapianius 
of  the  law,  which  had  got  to  be  unjust;  tcrtio,  the  nobles,  for  he 
forbade  they  should  be  killed,  as,  unfortunately,  the  people  had 
got  the  habit  of  doing. 


;42  2  H0N0R6   DE   BALZAC 

*But  he  still  had  the  Enemy  to  wipe  out;  and  he  wasn't  the 
man  to  go  to  sleep  at  a  mess-table,  because,  d'ye  see,  his  eye 
looked  over  the  whole  earth  as  if  it  were  no  big-ger  than  a  man's 
head.  So  then  he  appeared  in  Italy,  like  as  though  he  had  stuck 
his  head  through  the  window.  One  glance  was  enough.  The 
Austrians  were  swallowed  up  at  Marengo  like  so  many  gudgeons 
by  a  whale !  Ouf !  The  French  eagles  sang  their  paeans  so  loud 
that  all  the  world  heard  them  —  and  it  sufficed!  <We  won't  play 
that  game  any  more,*  said  the  German.  ^Enough,  enough!*  said 
all  the  rest. 

**  To  sum  up:  Europe  backed  down,  England  knocked  under. 
General  peace;  and  the  kings  and  the  people  made  believe  kiss 
each  other.  That's  the  time  when  the  Emperor  invented  the 
Legion  of  Honor  —  and  a  fine  thing,  too.  ^  In  France*  —  this 
is  what  he  said  at  Boulogne  before  the  whole  army  —  *  every 
man  is  brave.  So  the  citizen  who  does  a  fine  action  shall  be 
sister  to  the  soldier,  and  the  soldier  shall  be  his  brother,  and  the 
two  shall  be  one  under  the  flag  of  honor.* 

"  We,  who  were  down  in  Egypt,  now  came  home.  All  was 
changed!  He  left  us  general,  and  hey!  in  a  twinkling  we  found 
him  EMPEROR.  France  gave  herself  to  him,  like  a  fine  girl  to 
a  lancer.  When  it  was  done  —  to  the  satisfaction  of  all,  as  you 
may  say  —  a  sacred  ceremony  took  place,  the  like  of  which  was 
never  seen  imder  the  canopy  of  the  skies.  The  Pope  and  the 
cardinals,  in  their  red  and  gold  vestments,  crossed  the  Alps 
expressly  to  crown  him  before  the  army  and  the  people,  who 
clapped  their  hands.  There  is  one  thing  that  I  should  do  very 
wrong  not  to  tell  you.  In  Egypt,  in  the  desert  close  to  Syria, 
the  Rkd  Man  came  to  him  on  the  Mount  of  Moses,  and  said, 
*  All  is  well.*  Then,  at  Marengo,  the  night  before  the  victory, 
the  same  Red  Man  appeared  before  him  for  the  second  time, 
standing  erect  and  saying,  ^Thou  shalt  see  the  world  at  thy  feet; 
thou  shalt  be  Emperor  of  France,  King  of  Italy,  master  of  Hol- 
land, sovereign  of  Spain,  Portugal,  and  the  Illyrian  provinces, 
protector  of  Germany,  savior  of  Poland,  first  eagle  of  the  Legion 
of  Honor  —  all.*  This  Red  Man,  you  understand,  was  his  genius, 
his  spirit, —  a  sort  of  satellite  who  served  him,  as  some  say,  to 
communicate  with  his  star.  I  never  really  believed  that.  But 
the  Red  Man  himself  is  a  true  fact.  Napoleon  spoke  of  him, 
and  said  he  came  to  him  in  troubled  moments,  and  lived  in  the 
palace   of  the   Tuileries   under  the   roof.     So,  on   the   day  of  the 


HONORfi   DE  BALZAC  I423 

coronation,  Napoleon  saw  him  for  the  third  time;  and  they  were 
in  consultation  over  many  things. 

*  After  that,  Napoleon  went  to  Milan  to  be  crowned  king  of 
Italy,  and  there  the  grand  triumph  of  the  soldier  began.  Every 
man  who  could  write  was  made  an  officer.  .Down  came  pensions; 
it  rained  duchies;  treasures  poured  in  for  the  staff  which  didn't  cost 
France  a  penny;  and  the  Legion  of  Honor  provided  incomes  for 
the  private  soldiers,  —  of  which  I  receive  mine  to  this  day.  So 
here  were  the  armies  maintained  as  never  before  on  this  earth. 
But  besides  that,  the  Emperor,  knowing  that  he  was  to  be  the 
emperor  of  the  whole  world,  bethought  him  of  the  bourgeois, 
and  to  please  them  he  built  fairy  monuments,  after  their  own 
ideas,  in  places  where  you'd  never  think  to  find  any.  For 
instance,  suppose  you  were  coming  back  from  Spain  and  going 
to  Berlin  —  well,  you'd  find  triumphal  arches  along  the  way,  with 
common  soldiers  sculptured  on  the  stone,  every  bit  the  same  as 
generals.  In  two  or  three  years,  and  without  imposing  taxes  on 
any  of  you.  Napoleon  filled  his  vaults  with  gold,  built  palaces, 
made  bridges,  roads,  scholars,  fetes,  laws,  vessels,  harbors,  and 
spent  millions  upon  millions,  —  such  enormous  sums  that  he 
could,  so  they  tell  me,  have  paved  France  from  end  to  end  with 
five-franc  pieces,  if  he  had  had  a  mind  to. 

^^  Now,  when  he  sat  at  ease  on  his  throne,  and  was  master  of 
all,  so  that  Europe  waited  his  permission  to  do  his  bidding,  he 
remembered  his  four  brothers  and  his  three  sisters,  and  he  said 
to  us,  as  it  might  be  in  conversation,  in  an  order  of  the  day, 
*  My  children,  is  it  right  that  the  blood  relations  of  your  Emperor 
should  be  begging  their  bread  ?  No.  I  wish  to  see  them  in 
splendor  like  myself.  It  becomes,  therefore,  absolutely  necessary 
to  conquer  a  kingdom  for  each  of  them, —  to  the  end  that  French- 
men may  be  masters  over  all  lands,  that  the  soldiers  of  the 
Guard  shall  make  the  whole  earth  tremble,  that  France  may  spit 
where  she  likes,  and  that  all  the  nations  shall  say  to  her,  as  it 
is  written  on  my  copper  coins,  ^-'^  God  protects  yoiif^^''  *  Agreed,* 
cried  the  army.  ^  We'll  go  fish  for  thy  kingdoms  with  our  bay^ 
onets.*  Ha!  there  was  no  backing  down,  don't  you  see!  If  he 
had  taken  it  into  his  head  to  conquer  the  moon,  we  should  have 
made  ready,,  packed  knapsacks,  and  clambered  up;  happily,  he 
didn't  think  of  it.  The  kings  of  the  countries,  who  liked  their 
comfortable  thrones,  were  naturally  loathe  to  budge,  and  had  to 
have    their    ears    pulled;    so    then  —  Forward,    march!      We    did 


1424  HONORE   DE   BALZAC 

march;  we  got  there;  and  the  earth  once  more  trembled  to  its 
centre.  Hey!  the  men  and  the  shoes  he  used  up  in  those  days! 
The  enemy  dealt  us  such  blows  that  none  but  the  grand  army 
could  have  stood  the  fatig'ue  of  it.  But  you  are  not  ignorant 
that  a  Frenchman  is,  born  a  philosopher,  and  knows  that  a  little 
sooner,  or  a  little  later,  he  has  got  to  die.  So  we  were  ready  to 
die  without  a  word,  for  we  liked  to  see  the  Emperor  doing  that 
on  the  geographies.  *^ 

Here  the  narrator  nimbly  described  a  circle  with  his  foot  on 
the  floor  of  the  barn. 

**  And  Napoleon  said,  ^  There,  that's  to  be  a  kingdom.^  And 
a  kingdom  it  was.  Ha!  the  good  times!  The  colonels  were  gen- 
erals; the  generals,  marshals;  and  the  marshals,  kings.  There's 
one  of  'em  still  on  his  throne,  to  prove  it  to  Europe;  but  he's  a 
Gascon  and  a  traitor  to  France  for  keeping  that  crown;  and  he 
doesn't  blush  for  shame  as  he  ought  to-  do,  because  crowns,  don't 
you  see,  are  made  of,  gold.  I  who  am  speaking  to  you,  I  have 
seen,  in  Paris,  eleven  kings  and  a  mob  of  princes  surrounding 
Napoleon  like  the  rays  of  the  sun.  You  understand,  of  course, 
that  every  soldier  had  the  chance  to  mount  a  throne,  provided 
always  he  had  the  merit;  so  a  corporal  of  the  Guard  was  a  sight 
to  be  looked  at  as  he  walked  along,  for  each  man  had  his  share 
in  the  victory,  and  'twas  plainly  set  forth  in  the  bulletin.  What 
victories  they  were !  Austerlitz,  where  the  army  manoeuvred  as  if 
on  parade;  Eylau,  where  we  drowned  the  Russians  in  a  lake,  as 
though  Napoleon  had  blown  them  into  it  with  the  breath  of  his 
mouth;  Wagram,  where  the  army  fought  for  three  days  without 
grumbling.  We  won  as  many  battles  as  there  are  saints  in  the 
calendar.  It  was  proved  then  beyond  a  doubt,  that  Napoleon  had 
the  sword  of  God  in  his  scabbard.  The  soldiers  were  his  friends; 
he  made  them  his  children ;  he  looked  after  us ;  he  saw  that  we 
had  shoes,  and  shirts,  and  great-coats,  and  bread,  and  cartridges; 
but  he  always  kept  up  his  majesty;  for,  don't  you  see,  'twas  his 
business  to  reign.  No  matter  for  that,  however;  a  sergeant,  and 
even  a  common  soldier  could  say  to  him,  ^  My  Emperor,^  just  as 
you  say  to  me  sometimes,  *  My  good  friend.  ^  He  gave  us  an 
answer  if  we  appealed  to  him;  he  slept  in  the  snow  like  the 
rest  of  us;  and  indeed,  he  had  almost  the  air  of  a  human  man, 
I  who  speak  to  you,  I  have  seen  him  with  his  feet  among  the 
grapeshot,  and  no  more  uneasy  than  you  are  now, —  standing 
steady,  looking  through  his  field  glass,  and  minding  his  business. 


HONOR6   DE   BALZAC  1425 

'Twas  that  kept  the  rest  of  lis  quiet.  I  don't  know  how  he  did 
it,  but  when  he  spoke  he  made  our  hearts  burn  within  us;  and 
to  show  him  we  were  his  children,  incapable  of  balking,  didn't 
we  rush  at  the  mouths  of  the  rascally  cannon,  that  belched  and 
vomited  shot  and  shell  without  so  much  as  saying,  *■  Look  out ! ' 
Why!  the  dying  must  needs  raise  their  heads  to  salute  him  and 
cry,   <LONG  LIVE  THE  EMPEROR  !> 

"  I  ask  you,  was  that  natural  ?  would  they  have  done  that  for 
a  human  man  ? 

^^Well,  after  he  had  settled  the  world,  the  Empress  Josephine, 
his  wife,  a  good  woman  all  the  same,  managed  matters  so  that 
she  did  not  bear  him  any  children,  and  he  was  obliged  to  give 
her  up,  thoiigh  he  loved  her  considerably.  But,  you  see,  he  had 
to  have  little  ones  for  reasons  of  state.  Hearing  of  this,  all  the 
sovereigns  of  Europe  quarreled  as  to  which  of  them  should  give 
him  a  wife.  And  he  married,  so  they  told  us,  an  Austrian  arch- 
duchess, daughter  of  Caesar,  an  ancient  man  about  whom  people 
talk  a  good  deal,  and  not  in  France  only,  —  where  any  one  will 
tell  you  what  he  did, — but  in  Europe.  It  is  all  true,  for  I  myself 
who  address  you  at  this  moment,  I  have  been  on  the  Danube, 
and  have  seen  the  remains  of  a  bridge  built  by  that  man,  who, 
it  seems,  was  a  relation  of  Napoleon  in  Rome,  and  that's  how 
the  Emperor  got  the  inheritance  of  that  city  for  his  son.  So 
after  the  marriage,  which  was  a  fete  for  the  whole  world,  and  in 
honor  of  which  he  released  the  people  of  ten  years'  taxes,  —  which 
they  had  to  pay  all  the  same,  however,  because  the  assessors 
didn't  take  account  of  what  he  said, — his  wife  had  a  little  one, 
who  was  King  of  Rome.  Now,  there's  a  thing  that  had  never 
been  seen  on  this  earth;  never  before  was  a  child  born  a  king 
with  his  father  living.  On  that  day  a  balloon  went  up  in  Paris 
to  tell  the  news  to  Rome,  and  that  balloon  made  the  journey  in 
one  day! 

**  Now,  is  there  any  man  among  you  who  will  stand  up  and 
declare  to  me  that  all  that  was  human  ?  No ;  it  was  written 
above;  and  may  the  scurvy  seize  them  who  deny  that  he  was 
sent  by  God  himself  for  the  triumph  of  France! 

^*Well,  here's  the  Emperor  of  Russia,  that  used  to  be  his 
friend,  he  gets  angry  because  Napoleon  didn't  marry  a  Russian; 
so  he  joins  with  the  English,  our  enemies, — to  whom  our 
Emperor  always  wanted  to  say  a  couple  of  words  in  their  bur- 
rows, only  he  was  prevented.  Napoleon  gets  angry  too;  an  end 
in — 90 


1426  HONORE   DE   BALZAC 

"had  to  be  put  to  such  doings;  so  he  says  to  us: — *  Soldiers!  you 
have  been  masters  of  every  capital  in  Europe,  except  Moscow, 
which  is  now  the  ally  of  England.  To  conquer  England,  and 
India  which  belongs  to  the  English,  it  becomes  our  peremptory 
duty  to  go  to  Moscow.^  Then  he  assembled  the  greatest  army 
that  ever  trailed  its  gaiters  over  the  globe;  and  so  marvelously 
in  hand  it  was  that  he  reviewed  a  million  of  men  in  one  day. 
*Hourra!*  cried  the  Russians.  Down  came  all  Russia  and  those 
animals  of  Cossacks  in  a  flock.  'Twas  nation  against  nation, 
a  general  hurly-burly,  and  beware  who  could;  *Asia  against 
Europe,^  as  the  Red  Man  had  foretold  to  Napoleon.  *  Enough,^ 
cried  the  Emperor,   ^  I'll  be  ready. ^ 

"  So  now,  sure  enough,  came  all  the  kings,  as  the  Red  Man 
had  said,  to  lick  Napoleon's  hand!  Austria,  Prussia,  Bavaria, 
Saxony,  Poland,  Italy,  every  one  of  them  were  with  us,  flatter- 
ing us ;  ah,  it  was  fine !  The  eagles  never  cawed  so  loud  as  at 
those  parades,  perched  high  above  the  banners  of  all  Europe. 
The  Poles  were  bursting  with  joy,  because  Napoleon  was  going 
to  release  them;  and  that's  why  France  and  Poland  are  brothers 
to  this  day.  ^  Russia  is  ours,  ^  cried  the  army.  We  plunged  into 
it  well  supplied;  we  marched  and  we  marched, —  no  Russians. 
At  last  we  found  the  brutes  entrenched  on  the  banks  of  the 
Moskova.  That's  where  I  won  my  cross,  and  I've  got  the  right 
to  say  it  was  a  damnable  battle.  This  was  how  it  came  about. 
The  Emperor  was  anxious.  He  had  seen  the  Red  Man,  who 
said  to  him,  ^  My  son,  you  are  going  too  fast  for  your  feet;  you 
will  lack  men;  friends  will  betray  you.'  So  the  Emperor  offered 
peace.  But  before  signing,  *■  Let  us  drub  those  Russians ! '  he 
said  to  us.  *■  Done ! '  cried  the  army.  *■  Forward,  march  ! '  said 
the  sergeants.  My  clothes  were  in  rags,  my  shoes  worn  out, 
from  trudging  along  those  roads,  which  are  very  uncomfortable 
ones;  but  no  matter!  I  said  to  myself,  ^  As  it's  the  last  of  our 
earthquakings,  I'll  go  into  it,  tooth  and  nail!*  We  were  drawn 
up  in  line  before  the  great  ravine, —  front  seats,  as  'twere. 
Signal  given;  and  seven  himdred  pieces  of  artillery  began  a  con- 
versation that  would  bring  the  blood  from  your  ears.  Then  — 
must  do  justice  to  one's  enemies  —  the  Russians  let  themselves 
be  killed  like  Frenchmen;  they  wouldn't  give  way;  we  couldn't 
advance.  ^Forward,*  some  one  cried,  ^here  comes  the  Emperor!' 
True  enough;  he  passed  at  a  gallop,  waving  his  hand  to  let  us 
know  we  must  take  the  redoubt.     He  inspired  us;  on  we  ran,  I 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC  -      1427 

was  the  first  in  the  ravine.  Ha!  my  God!  how  the  lieutenants 
fell,  and  the  colonels,  and  the  soldiers!  No  matter!  all  the  more 
shoes  for  those  that  had  none,  and  epaulets  for  the  clever  ones 
who  knew  how  to  read.  *■  Victory !  ^  cried  the  whole  line ;  *■  Vic- 
tory !  * —  and,  would  you  believe  it  ?  a  thing  never  seen  before, 
there  lay  twenty-five  thousand  Frenchmen  on  the  ground.  'Twas 
like  mowing  down  a  wheat-field;  only  in  place  of  the  ears  of 
wheat  put  the  heads  of  men !  We  were  sobered  by  this  time, — 
those  who  were  left  alive.  The  Man  rode  up;  we  made  a  circle 
round  him.  Ha!  he  knew  how  to  cajole  his  children;  he  could 
be  amiable  when  he  liked,  and  feed  'em  with  words  when  their 
stomachs  were  ravenous  with  the  hunger  of  wolves.  Flatterer! 
he  distributed  the  crosses  himself,  he  uncovered  to  the  dead,  and 
then  he  cried  to  us,  ^  On !  to  Moscow !  ^  *  To  Moscow !  ^  answered 
the  army. 

"  We  took  Moscow.  Would  you  believe  it  ?  the  Russians 
burned  their  own  city!  'Twas  a  haystack  six  miles  square,  and 
it  blazed  for  two  days.  The  buildings  crashed  like  slates,  and 
showers  of  melted  iron  and  lead  rained  down  upon  us,  which  was 
naturally  horrible.  I  may  say  to  you  plainly,  it  was  like  a  flash 
of  lightning  on  our  disasters.  The  Emperor  said,  ^We  have 
done  enough;  my  soldiers  shall  rest  here.'  So  we  rested  awhile, 
just  to  get  the  breath  into  our  bodies  and  the  flesh  on  our  bones, 
for  we  were  really  tired.  We  took  possession  of  the  golden  cross 
that  was  on  the  Kremlin;  and  every  soldier  brought  away  with 
him  a  small  fortune.  But  out  there  the  winter  sets  in  a  month 
earlier, —  a  thing  those  fools  of  science  didn't  properly  explain. 
So,  coming  back,  the  cold  nipped  us.  No  longer  an  army  —  do 
you  hear  me  ?  —  no  longer  any  generals,  no  longer  any  sergeants 
even.  'Twas  the  reign  of  wretchedness  and  hunger, —  a  reign  of 
equality  at  last.  No  one  thought  of  anything  but  to  see  France 
once  more;  no  one  stooped  to  pick  up  his  gun  or  his  money  if 
he  dropped  them;  each  man  followed  his  nose,  and  went  as  he 
pleased  without  caring  for  glory.  The  weather  was  so  bad  the 
Emperor  couldn't  see  his  star;  there  was  something  between  him 
and  the  skies.  Poor  man!  it  made  him  ill  to  see  his  eagles  fly- 
ing away  from  victory.  Ah !  'twas  a  mortal  blow,  you  may 
believe  me. 

"  Well,  we  got  to  the  Beresina.  My  friends,  I  can  afhrm  to 
you  by  all  that  is  most  sacred,  by  my  honor,  that  since  mankind 
came    into     the    world,     never,     never,    was    there    seen    such    a 


1428     ■  HONORfi   DE   BALZAC 

fricassee  of  an  army  —  gims,  carriages,  artillery  wagons  —  in  the 
midst  of  such  snows,  under  such  relentless  skies!  The  muzzles 
of  the  muskets  burned  our  hands  if  we  touched  them,  the  iron 
was  so  cold.  It  was  there  that  the  army  was  saved  by  the  pon- 
toniers,  who  were  firm  at  their  post;  and  there  that  Gondrin  — 
sole  survivor  of  the  men  who  were  bold  enough  to  go  into  the 
water  and  build  the  bridges  by  which  the  army  crossed  —  that 
Gondrin,  here  present,  admirably  conducted  himself,  and  saved 
us  from  the  Russians,  who,  I  must  tell  you,  still  respected  the 
grand  army,  remembering  its  victories.  And,^^  he  added,  pointing 
to  Gondrin,  who  was  gazing  at  him  with  the  peculiar  attention 
of  a  deaf  man,  "  Gondrin  is  a  finished  soldier,  a  soldier  who  is 
honor  itself,  and  he  merits  your  highest  esteem.*' 

"  I  saw  the  Emperor, "  he  resumed,  <*  standing  by  the  bridge, 
motionless,  not  feeling  the  cold  —  was  that  human?  He  looked 
at  the  destruction  of  his  treasure,  his  friends,  his  old  Egyptians. 
Bah!  all  that  passed  him,  women,  army  wagons,  artillery,  all 
were  shattered,  destroyed,  ruined.  The  bravest  carried  the 
eagles;  for  the  eagles,  d'ye  see,  were  France,  the  nation,  all  of 
you!  they  were  the  civil  and  the  military  honor  that  must  be 
kept  pure ;  could  their  heads  be  lowered  because  of  the  cold  ?  It 
was  only  near  the  Emperor  that  we  warmed  ourselves,  because 
when  he  was  in  danger  we  ran,  frozen  as  w^e  were  —  we,  who 
wouldn't  have  stretched  a  hand  to  save  a  friend.  They  told  us 
he  wept  at  night  over  his  poor  family  of  soldiers.  Ah!  none  but 
he  and  Frenchmen  could  have  got  themselves  out  of  that  busi- 
ness. 

^'We  did  get  out,  but  with  losses,  great  losses,  as  I  tell 
you.  The  Allies  captured  our  provisions.  Men  began  to  betray 
him,  as  the  Red  Man  predicted.  Those  chatterers  in  Paris,  who 
had  held  their  tongues  after  the  Imperial  Guard  was  formed, 
now  thought  he  was  dead;  so  they  hoodwinked  the  prefect  of 
police,  and  hatched  a  conspiracy  to  overthrow  the  empire.  He 
heard  of  it;  it  worried  him.  He  left  us,  saying:  'Adieu,  my 
children;  guard  the  outposts;  I  shall  return  to  you.'  Bah!  with- 
out him  nothing  went  right;  the  generals  lost  their  heads;  the 
marshals  talked  nonsense  and  committed  follies;  but  that  was 
not  surprising,  for  Napoleon,  who  was  kind,  had  fed  'em  on  gold; 
they  had  got  as  fat  as  lard,  and  wouldn't  stir;  some  stayed  in 
camp  when  they  ought  to  have  been  warming  the  backs  of  the 
enemy  who  was  between  us  and  France. 


HONORE  DE  BALZAC 


1429 


<<  But  the  Emperor  came  back,  and  he  brought  recruits,  famous 

recruits;    he  changed  their  backbone  and  made  'em  dogs  of  war, 

fit  to  set  their  teeth  into  anything;    and  he   brought  a  guard  of 

honor,  a  fine  body  indeed!  —  all  bourgeois,  who  melted  away  like 

'butter  on  a  gridiron. 

<*Well,  spite  of  our  stern  bearing,  here's  everything  going 
against  us;  and  yet  the  army  did  prodigies  of  valor.  Then 
came  battles  on  the  mountains,  nations  against  nations, —  Dres- 
den, Lutzen,  Bautzen.  Remember  these  days,  all  of  you,  for 
'twas  then  that  Frenchmen  were  so  particularly  heroic  that  a 
good  grenadier  only  lasted  six  months.  We  triumphed  always: 
yet  there  were  those  English,  in  our  rear,  rousing  revolts  against 
us  with  their  lies!  No  matter,  we  cut  our  way  home  through 
the  whole  pack  of  the  nations.  Wherever  the  Emperor  showed 
himself  we  followed  him;  for  if,  by  sea  or  land,  he  gave  us  the 
word  *  Go !  ^  we  went.  At  last,  we  were  in  France ;  and  many  a 
poor  foot-soldier  felt  the  air  of  his  own  country  restore  his  soul 
to  satisfaction,  spite  of  the  wintry  weather.  I  can  say  for  myself 
that  it  refreshed  my  life.  Well,  next,  our  business  was  to  defend 
France,  our  country,  our  beautiful  France,  against  all  Europe, 
which  resented  our  having  laid  down  the  law  to  the  Russians, 
and  pushed  them  back  into  their  dens,  so  that  they  couldn't  eat 
us  up  alive,  as  northern  nations,  who  are  dainty  and  like  southern 
flesh,  have  a  habit  of  doing, —  at  least,  so  Fve  heard  some  gen- 
erals say.  Then  the  Emperor  saw  his  own  father-in-law,  his 
friends  whom  he  had  made  kings,  and  the  scoundrels  to  whom 
he  had  given  back  their  thrones,  all  against  him.  Even  French- 
men, and  allies  in  our  own  ranks,  turned  against  us  under  secret 
orders,  as  at  the  battle  of  Leipsic.  Would  common  soldiers  have 
been  capable  of  such  wickedness  ?  Three  times  a  day  men  were 
false  to  their  word, —  and  they  called  themselves  princes! 

"  So,  then,  France  was  invaded.  Wherever  the  Emperor 
showed  his  lion  face,  the  enemy  retreated;  and  he  did  more 
prodigies  in  defending  France  than  ever  he  had  done  in  conquer- 
ing Italy,  the  East,  Spain,  Europe,  and  Russia.  He  meant  to 
bury  every  invader  under  the  sod,  and  teach  'em  to  respect  the 
soil  of  France.  So  he  let  them  get  to  Paris,  that  he  might  swal- 
low them  at  a  mouthful,  and  rise  to  the  height  of  his  genius  in 
a  battle  greater  than  all  the  rest, —  a  mother-battle,  as  'twere. 
But  there,  there !  the  Parisians  were  afraid  for  their  twopenny 
skins,   and  their  trumpery  shops;   they  opened  the  gates.      Then 


I430  HONORE   DE  BALZAC 

the  Ragusades  began,  and  happiness  ended.  The  Empress  was 
fooled,  and  the  white  banner  flaunted  from  the  windows.  The 
generals  whom  he  had  made  his  nearest  friends  abandoned  him 
for  the  Bourbons, —  a  set  of  people  no  one  had  heard  tell  of. 
The  Emperor  bade  us  farewell  at  Fontainebleau :  — ^  Soldiers !  ^ — 
I  can  hear  him  now;  we  wept  like  children;  the  flags  and  the 
eagles  were  lowered  as  if  for  a  funeral :  it  was,  I  may  well  say 
it  to  you,  it  was  the  funeral  of  the  Empire;  her  dapper  armies 
were  nothing  now  but  skeletons.  So  he  said  to  us,  standing 
there  on  the  portico  of  his  palace :  — ^  My  soldiers !  we  are  van- 
quished by  treachery;  but  we  shall  meet  in  heaven,  the  country 
of  the  brave.  Defend  my  child,  whom  I  commit  to  you.  Long 
live  Napoleon  II.  !  ^  He  meant  to  die,  that  no  man  should  look 
upon  Napoleon  vanquished;  he  took  poison,  enough  to  have 
killed  a  regiment,  because,  like  Jesus  Christ  before  his  Passion, 
he  thought  himself  abandoned  of  God  and  his  talisman.  But  the 
Doison  did  not  hurt  him. 

"See  again!  he  found  he  was  immortal. 

"  Sure  of  himself,  knowing  he  must  ever  be  The  Emperor,  he 
went  for  a  while  to  an  island  to  study  out  the  nature  of  these 
others,  who,  you  may  be  sure,  committed  follies  without  end. 
Whilst  he  bided  his  time  down  there,  the  Chinese,  and  the  wild 
men  on  the  coast  of  Africa,  and  the  Barbary  States,  and  others 
who  are  not  at  all  accommodating,  knew  so  well  he  was  inore 
than  man  that  they  respected  his  tent,  saying  to  touch  it  woiild 
be  to  offend  God.  Thus,  d'ye  see,  when  these  others  turned  him 
from  the  doors  of  his  own  France,  he  still  reigned  over  the  whole 
world.  Before  long  he  embarked  in  the  same  little  cockleshell 
of  a  boat  he  had  had  in  Egypt,  sailed  round  the  beard  of  the 
English,  set  foot  in  France,  and  France  acclaimed  him.  The 
sacred  cuckoo  flew  from  spire  to  spire;  all  France  cried  out  with 
one  voice,  *■  Long  Live  The  Emperor  !  ^  In  this  region,  here,  the 
enthusiasm  for  that  wonder  of  the  ages  was,  I  may  say,  solid. 
Dauphine  behaved  well;  and  I  am  particularly  pleased  to  know 
that  her  people  wept  when  they  saw,  once  more,  the  gray  over- 
coat. March  first  it  was,  when  Napoleon  landed  with  two  him- 
dred  men  to  conquer  that  kingdom  of  France  and  of  Navarre, 
which  on  the  twentieth  of  the  same  month  was  again  the  French 
Empire.  On  that  day  our  Man  was  in  Paris;  he  had  made  a 
clean  sweep,  recovered  his  dear  France,  and  gathered  his  veterans 
together  by  saying  no  more  than  three  words,  *I  am  here.* 


HONORE   DE   BALZAC  I^^I 

*  'Twas  the  greatest  miracle  God  had  yet  done !  Before  him^ 
did  ever  man  recover  an  empire  by  showing  his  hat  ?  And  these 
others,  who  thought  they  had  subdued  France!  Not  they!  At 
sight  of  the  eagles,  a  national  army  sprang  up,  and  we  marched 
to  Waterloo.  There,  the  Guard  died  at  one  blow.  Napoleon, 
in  despair,  threw  himself  three  times  before  the  cannon  of  the 
enemy  without  obtaining  death.  We  saw  that.  The  battle  was 
lost.  That  night  the  Emperor  called  his  old  soldiers  to  him;  on 
the  field  soaked  with  our  blood  he  burned  his  banner  and  his 
eagles, — his  poor  eagles,  ever  victorious,  who  cried  ^Forward* 
in  the  battles,  and  had  flown  the  length  and  breadth  of  Europe, 
they  were  saved  the  infamy  of  belonging  to  the  enemy:  all  the 
treasures  of  England  couldn't  get  her  a  tail-feather  of  them.  No 
more  eagles !  —  the  rest  is  well  known.  The  Red  Man  went  over 
to  the  Bourbons,  like  the  scoundrel  that  he  is.  France  is  crushed; 
the  soldier  is  nothing;  they  deprive  him  of  his  dues;  they  dis- 
charge him  to  make  room  for  broken-down  nobles  —  ah,  'tis  pit- 
iable !  They  seized  Napoleon  by  treachery ;  the  English  nailed 
him  on  a  desert  island  in  mid-ocean  on  a  rock  raised  ten  thousand 
feet  above  the  earth;  and  there  he  is,  and  will  be,  till  the  Red 
Man  gives  him  back  his  power  for  the  happiness  of  France. 
These  others  say  he's  dead.  Ha,  dead!  'Tis  easy  to  see  they 
don't  know  Him.  They  tell  that  fib  to  catch  the  people,  and 
feel  safe  in  their  hovel  of  a  government.  Listen !  the  truth  at 
the  bottom  of  it  all  is  that  his  friends  have  left  him  alone  on  the 
desert  island  to  fulfil  a  prophecy,  for  I  forgot  to  say  that  his 
name.  Napoleon,  means  ^ion  of  the  desert.^  Now  this  that  I 
tell  you  is  true  as  the  Gospel.  All  other  tales  that  you  hear 
about  the  Emperor  are  follies  without  common-sense;  because, 
d'ye  see,  God  never  gave  to  child  of  woman  born  the  right  to 
stamp  his  name  in  red  as  lie  did,  on  the  earth,  which  forever 
shall  remember  him !  Long  live  Napoleon,  the  father  of  his  peo- 
ple and  of  the  soldier !  ^* 

"Long  live  General  Eble !  '*  cried  the  pontonier. 

"  How  happened  it  you  were  not  killed  in  the  ravine  at  Mos- 
kova  ?  *'  asked  a  peasant  woman. 

"  How  do  I  know  ?  We  went  in  a  regiment,  we  came  out  a 
hundred  foot-soldiers;  none  but  the  lines  were  capable  of  taking 
that  redoubt:  the  infantry,   d'ye  see,   that's  the  real  army. *^ 

"  And  the  cavalry !  what  of  that  ?  '^  cried  Genastas,  letting  him- 
self roll   from  the    top   of  the   hay,    and   appearing   to   u«    with   a 


1432  HONORE   DE  BALZAC 

suddenness  which  made  the  bravest  utter  a  cry  of  terror.  "  Eh  \ 
my  old  veteran,  you  forget  the  red  lancers  of  Poniatowski,  the 
cuirassiers,  the  dragoons!  they  that  shook  the  earth  when  Napo- 
leon, impatient  that  the  victory  was  delayed,  said  to  Murat,  *  Sire, 
cut  them  in  two.^  Ha,  we  were  oif!  first  at  a  trot,  then  at  a 
gallop,  *  one,  two,'  and  the  enemy's  line  was  cut  in  halves  like  an 
apple  with  a  knife.  A  charge  of  cavalry,  my  old  hero!  why, 
'tis  a  column  of  cannon  balls !  ** 

*^  How  about  the  pontoniers  ?  *'  cried  Gondrin. 

"My  children,**  said  Genastas,  becoming  suddenly  quite 
ashamed  of  his  sortie  when  he  saw  himself  in  the  midst  of  a 
silent  and  bewildered  group,  "  there  are  no  spies  here,  —  see,  take 
this  and  drink  to  the  Little  Corporal.** 

«LONG  LIVE  THE  EMPEROR!**  cried  all  the  people  pres- 
ent,  with  one  voice. 

"Hush,  my  children!*'  said  the  officer,  struggling  to  control 
his  emotion.  "  Hush !  /le  is  dead.  He  died  saying,  <  Glory, 
France,  and  battle.*  My  friends,  he  had  to  die,  he!  but  his 
memory  —  never!  ** 

Goguelat  made  a  gesture  of  disbelief;  then  he  said  in  a  low 
voice  to  those  nearest,  "  The  officer  is  still  in  the  service,  and 
he's  told  to  tell  the  people  the  Emperor  is  dead.  We  mustn't  be 
angry  with  him,  because,  d'ye  see,  a  soldier  has  to  obey  orders.** 

As  Genestas  left  the  barn  he  heard  the  Fosseuse  say,  "That 
officer  is  a  friend  of  the  Emperor  and  of  Monsieur  Benassis.  ** 
On  that,  all  the  people  rushed  to  the  door  to  get  another  sight 
of  him,  and  by  the  light  of  the  moon  they  saw  the  doctor  take 
his  arm. 

"I  committed  a  great  folly,**  said  Genestas.  "Let  us  get  home 
quickly.  Those  eagles  —  the  cannon  —  the  campaigns !  I  no 
longer  knew  where  I  was.** 

"  What  do  you  think  of  my  Goguelat  ?  **  asked  Benassis. 

"  Monsieur,  so  long  as  such  tales  are  told,  France  will  carry 
in  her  entrails  the  fourteen  armies  of  the  Republic,  and  may  at 
any  time  renew  the  conversation  of  cannon  with  all  Europe. 
That's  my  opinion.** 


GEORGE    BANCROFT 


1433 

GEORGE   BANCROFT 

(1800-1891) 

BY   AUSTIN   SCOTT 

Ihe  life  of  George  Bancroft  was  nearly  conterminous  with  the 
nineteenth  century.  He  was  born  at  Worcester,  Mass., 
October  3d,  1800,  and  died  at  Washington,  D.  C,  January 
17th,  1 89 1.  Bvit  it  was  not  merely  the  stretch  of  his  years  that 
identified  him  with  this  century.  In  some  respects  he  represented 
his  time  as  no  other  of  its  men.  He  came  into  touch  with  many 
widely  differing  elements  which  made  up  its  life  and  character.  He 
spent  most  of  his  life  in  cities,  but  never  lost  the  sense  for  country 
sights  and  sounds  which  central  Massachusetts  gave  him  in  Worces- 
ter, his  birthplace,  and  in  Northampton,  where  he  taught  school. 
The  home  into  which  he  was  born  offered  him  from  his  infancy  a 
rich  possession.  His  father  was  a  Unitarian  clergyman  who  wrote  a 
<Life  of  Washington >  that  was  received  with  favor;  thus  things  con- 
cerning God  and  country  were  his  patrimony.  Not  without  signifi- 
cance was  a  word  of  his  mother  which  he  recalled  in  his  latest  years, 
«My  son,  I  do  not  wish  you  to  become  a  rich  man,  but  I  would  have 
you  be  an  affluent  man;  ad  fluo,  always  a  little  more  coming  in  than 
going  out.'* 

To  the  advantages  of  his  boyhood  home  and  of  Harvard  College, 
to  which  he  went  as  a  lad  of  thirteen,  the  eager  young  student 
added  the  opportunity,  then  uncommon,  of  a  systematic  course  of 
study  in  Germany,  and  won  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Philosophy  at 
Gottingen  in  1820.  He  had  in  a  marked  degree  the  characteristics  of 
his  countrymen,  versatility  and  adaptability.  Giving  up  an  early  pur- 
pose of  fitting  himself  for  the  pulpit,  he  taught  in  Harvard,  and 
helped  to  found  a  school  of  -an  advanced  type  at  Northampton. 
Meantime  he  published  a  volume  of  verse,  and  found  out  that  the 
passionate  love  of  poetry  which  lasted  through  his  life  was  not 
creative.  At  Northampton  he  published  in  1828  a  translation  in  two 
volumes  of  Heeren's  < History  of  the  Political  System  of  Europe,*  and 
also  edited  two  editions  of  a  Latin  Reader;  but  the  duties  of  a 
schoolmaster's  life  were  early  thrown  aside,  and  he  could  not  be 
persuaded  to  resume  them  later  when  the  headship  of  an  important 
educational  institution  was  offered  to  him.  Together  with  the  one 
great  pursuit  of  his  life,  to  which  he  remained  true  for  sixty  years, 
he  delighted  in  the  activities  of  a  politician,  the  duties  of  a  states- 
man, and  the  occuDations  of  a  man  of  affairs  and  of  the  world. 


1434  GEORGE   BANCROFT 

Bancroft  received  a  large  but  insufificient  vote  as  the  Democratic 
candidate  for  the  Governorship  of  Massachusetts,  and  for  a  time  he 
held  the  office  of  Collector  of  the  port  of  Boston.  As  Secretary  of 
the  Navy  in  the  Cabinet  of  Polk,  he  rendered  to  his  country  two 
distinct  services  of  great  value :  he  founded  the  Naval  School  at 
Annapolis,  and  by  his  prompt  orders  to  the  American  commander  in 
the  Pacific  waters  he  secured  the  acquisition  of  California  for  the 
United  States.  The  special  abilities  he  displayed  in  the  Cabinet  were 
such,  so  Polk  thought,  as  to  lead  to  his  appointment  as  Minister  to 
England  in  1846.  He  was  a  diplomat  of  no  mean  order.  President 
Johnson  appointed  him  Minister  to  Germany  in  1867,  and  Grant 
retained  him  at  that  post  until  1874,  as  long  as  Bancroft  desired  it. 
During  his  stay  there  he  concluded  just  naturalization  treaties  with 
Germany,  and  in  a  masterly  way  won  from  the  Emperor,  William  I., 
as  arbitrator,  judgment  in  favor  of  the  United  States's  claim  over 
that  of  Great  Britain  in  the  Northwestern  boundary  dispute. 

Always  holding  fast  his  one  cherished  object, — that  of  worthily 
writing  the  history  of  the  United  States,  —  Bancroft  did  not  deny  him- 
self the  pleasure  of  roaming  in  other  fields.  He  wrote  frequently  on 
current  topics,  on  literary,  historical,  and  political  subjects.  His  eulo- 
gies of  Jackson  and  of  Lincoln,  pronounced  before  Congress,  entitle 
him  to  the  rank  of  an  orator.  He  was  very  fond  of  studies  in  meta- 
physics, and  Trendelenburg,  the  eminent  German  philosopher,  said  of 
him,  <^ Bancroft  knows  Kant  through  and  through.^' 

His  home  —  whether  in  Boston,  or  in  New  York  where  he  spent 
the  middle  portion  of  his  life,  or  in  Washington  his  abode  for  the  last 
sixteen  years,  or  during  his  residence  abroad  —  was  the  scene  of  the 
occupations  and  delights  which  the  highest  culture  craves.  He  was 
gladly  welcomed  to  the  inner  circle  of  the  finest  minds  of  Germany, 
and  the  tribute  of  the  German  men  of  learning  was  unfeigned  and 
universal  when  he  quitted  the  country  in  1874.  Many  of  the  best 
men  of  England  and  of  France  were  among  his  warm  friends.  At 
his  table  were  gathered  from  time  to  time  some  of  the  world's  great- 
est thinkers, — men  of  science,  soldiers,  statesmen  and  men  of  affairs. 
Fond  as  he  was  of  social  joys,  it  was  his  daily  pleasure  to  mount  his 
horse  and  alone,  or  with  a  single  companion,  to  ride  where  nature  in 
her  shy  or  in  her  exuberant  mood  inspired.  One  day,  after  he  was 
eighty  years  old,  he  rode  on  his  young,  blooded  Kentucky  horse  along 
the  Virginia  bank  of  the  Potomac  for  more  than  thirty-six  miles.  He 
could  be  seen  every  day  among  the  perfect  roses  of  his  garden  at 
"Roseclyffe,'*  his  Newport  summer-home,  often  full  of  thought,  at 
other  times  in  wellnigh  boisterous  glee,  always  giving  unstinted  care 
and  expense  to  the  queen  of  flowers.  The  books  in  which  he  kept 
the   record   of  the  rose  garden  were  almost  as  elaborate  as  those  in 


GEORGE   BANCROFT 


I43S 


which  were  entered  the  facts  and  fancies  out  of  which  his  History 
grew.  His  home  life  was  charming.  By  a  careful  use  of  opportuni- 
ties and  of  his  means  he  became  an  ".affluent"  man.  He  was  twice 
married:  both  times  a  new  source  of  refined  domestic  happiness  long 
blessed  his  home,  and  new  means  for  enlarged  comfort  and  hospi- 
tality were  added  to  his  own.  Two  sons,  children  of  his  first  wife, 
survived  him. 

Some  of  Bancroft's  characteristics  were  not  unlike  those  of  Jeffer- 
son. A  constant  tendency  to  idealize  called  up  in  him  at  times  a 
feeling  verging  on  impatience  with  the  facts  or  the  men  that  stood 
in  the  way  of  a  theory  or  the  accomplishment  of  a  personal  desire. 
He  had  a  keen  perception  of  an  .underlying  or  a  final  truth  and  pro- 
fessed warm  love  for  it,  whether  in  the  large  range  of  history  or  in 
the  nexus  of  current  politics:  any  one  taking  a  different  point  of 
view  at  times  was  led  to  think  that  his  facts,  as  he  stated  them,  lay 
crosswise,  and  might  therefore  find  the  perspectiv-e  out  of  drawing, 
but  could  not  rightly  impugn  his  good  faith. 

Although  a  genuine  lover  of  his  race  and  a  believer  in  Democracy, 
he  was  not  always  ready  to  put  implicit  trust  in  the  individual  as 
being  capable  of  exercising  a  wise  judgment  and  the  power  of  true 
self-direction.  For  man  he  avowed  a  perfect  respect;  among  men 
his  bearing  showed  now  and  then  a  trace  of  condescension.  In  con- 
troversies over  disputed  points  of  history  —  and  he  had  many  such  — 
he  meant  to  be  fair  and  to  anticipate  the  final  verdict  of  truth,  but 
overwhelming  evidence  was  necessary  to  convince  him  that  his  judg- 
ment, formed  after  painstaking  research,  could  be  wrong.  His  ample 
love  of  justice,  however,  is  proved  by  his  passionate  appreciation  of 
the  character  of  Washington,  by  his  unswerving  devotion  to  the  con- 
ception of  our  national  unity,  both  in  its  historical  development  and 
at  the  moment  when  it  was  imperiled  by  civil  war,  and  by  his 
hatred  of  slavery  and  of  false  financial  policies.  He  took  pleasure  in 
giving  generously,  but  always  judiciously  and  without  ostentation. 
On  one  occasion  he,  with  a  few  of  his  friends,  paid  off  the  debt  from 
the  house  of  an  eminent  scholar;  on  another,  he  helped  to  rebuild 
for  a  great  thinker  the  home  which  had  been  burned.  At  Harvard, 
more  than  fifty  years  after  his  graduation,  he  founded  a  traveling 
scholarship  and  named  it  in  honor  of  the  president  of  his  college 
days. 

As  to  the  manner  of  his  work,  Bancroft  laid  large  plans  and  gave 
to  the  details  of  their  execution  unwearied  zeal.  The  scope  of  the 
*■  History  of  the  United  States  >  as  he  planned  it  was  admirable.  In 
carrying  it  out  he  was  persistent  in  acquiring  materials,  sparing  no 
pains  in  his  research  at  home  and  abroad,  and  no  cost  in  securing 
original  papers  or  exact  copies  and  transcripts  from  the  archives  of 


1436 


GEORGE  BANCROFT 


England  and  France,  Spain  and  Holland  and  Germany,  from  public 
libraries  and  from  individuals;  he  fished  in  all  waters  and  drew  fish 
of  all  sorts  into  his  net.  He  took  great  pains,  and  the  secretaries 
whom  he  employed  to  aid  him  in  his  work  were  instructed  likewise 
to  take  great  pains,  not  only  to  enter  facts  in  the  reference  books  in 
their  chronological  order,  but  to  make  all  possible  cross-references  to 
related  facts.  The  books  of  his  library,  which  was  large  and  rich  in 
treasures,  he  used  as  tools,  and  many  of  them  were  filled  with  cross 
references.  In  the  fly-leaves  of  the  books  he  read  he  made  note  with 
a  word  and  the  cited  page  of  what  the  printed  pages  contained  of 
interest  to  him  or  of  value  in  his  work. 

His  mind  was  one  of  quick  perceptions  within  a  wide  range,  and 
always  alert  to  grasp  an  idea  in  its  manifold  relations.  It  is  remark- 
able, therefore,  that  he  was  very  laborious  in  his  method  of  work. 
He  often  struggled  long  with  a  thought  for  intellectual  mastery.  In 
giving  it  expression,  his  habit  was  to  dictate  rapidly  and  with  enthu- 
siasm and  at  great  length,  but  he  usually  selected  the  final  form 
after  repeated  efforts.  His  first  draft  of  a  chapter  was  revised  again 
and  again  and  condensed.  One  of  his  early  volumes  in  its  first  man- 
uscript form  was  eight  times  as  long  as  when  finally  published.  He 
had  another  striking  habit,  that  of  writing  by  topics  rather  than  in 
strict  chronological  order,  so  that  a  chapter  which  was  to  find  its 
place  late  in  the  volume  was  often  completed  before  one  which  was 
to  precede  it.  Partly  by  nature  and  perhaps  partly  by  this  prac- 
tice, he  had  the  power  to  carry  on  simultaneously  several  trains  of 
thought.  When  preparing  one  of  his  public  orations,  it  was  remarked 
by  one  of  his  household  that  after  an  evening  spent  over  a  trifling 
game  of  bezique,  the  next  morning  found  him  well  advanced  beyond 
the  point  where  the  work  had  been  seemingly  laid  down.  He  had 
the  faculty  of  buoying  a  thought,  knowing  just  where  to  take  it  up 
after  an  interruption  and  deftly  splicing  it  in  continuous  line,  some- 
times after  a  long  interval.  When  about  to  begin  the  preparation  of 
the  argument  which  was  to  sustain  triumphantly  the  claim  of  the 
United  States  in  the  boundary  question,  he  wrote  from  Berlin  for 
copies  of  documents  filed  in  the  office  of  the  Navy  Department,  which 
he  remembered  were  there  five-and-twenty  years  before. 

The  <  History  of  the  United  States  from  the  Discovery  of  America 
to  the  Inauguration  of  Washington^  is  treated  by  Bancroft  in  three 
parts.  The  first,  Colonial  History  from  1492  to  1748,  occupies  more 
than  one  fourth  of  his  pages.  The  second  part,  the  American  Revo- 
lution, 1748  to  1782,  claims  more  than  one  half  of  the  entire  work, 
and  is  divided  into  four  epochs:  —  the  first,  1 748-1 763,  is  entitled 
*The  Overthrow  of  the  European  Colonial  System*;  the  second, 
1763-1774,  *How   Great  Britain  Estranged  America*;  the  third,    1774- 


GEORGE  BANCROFT  1437 

1776,  'America  Declares  Itself  -Independent > ;  the  fourth,  1776-1782, 
^The  Independence  of  America  is  Acknowledged.*  The  last  part, 
^The  History  of  the  Formation  of  the  Constitution,*  1782-1789,  though 
published  as  a  separate  work,  is  essentially  a  continuation  of  the 
History  proper,  of  which  it  forms  in  bulk  rather  more  than  one 
tenth. 

If  his  services  as  a  historian  are  to  be  judged  by  any  one  portion 
of  his  work  rather  than  by  another,  the  history  of  the  formation  of 
the  Constitution  affords  the  best  test.  In  that  the  preceding  work 
comes  to  fruition;  the  time  of  its  writing,  after  the  Civil  War  and 
the  conseqitent  settling  of  the  one  vexing  question  by  the  abolition 
of  sectionalism,  and  when  he  was  in  the  fullness  of  the  experience  of 
his  own  ripe  years,  was  most  opportune.  Bancroft  was  equal  to  his 
opportunity.  He  does  not  teach  us  that  the  Constitution  is  the  result 
of  superhuman  wisdom,  nor  on  the  other  hand  does  he  admit,  as 
John  Adams  asserted,  that  however  excellent,  the  Constitution  was 
wrung  <^from  the  grinding  necessity  of  a  reluctant  people.**  He  does 
not  fail  to  point  out  the  critical  nature  of  the  four  years  prior  to  the 
meeting  of  the  Federal  Convention;  but  he  discerns  that  whatever 
occasions,  whether  transitory  or  for  the  time  of  ^*  steady  and  com- 
manding influence,"  may  help  or  hinder  the  formation  of  the  now 
perfect  union,  its  true  cause  was  "  an  indwelling  necessity  **  in  the 
people  to  ^^  form  above  the  States  a  common  constitution  for  the 
whole.** 

Recognizing  the  fact  that  the  primary  cause  for  the  true  union 
was  remote  in  origin  and  deep  and  persistent,  Bancroft  giv^s  a  ret- 
rospect of  the  steps  toward  union  from  the  founding  of  the  colonies 
to  the  close  of  the  war  for  independence.  Thenceforward,  sugges- 
tions as  to  method  or  form  of  amending  the  Articles  of  Confeder- 
ation, whether  made  by  individuals,  or  State  Legislatures,  or  by 
Congress,  were  in  his  view  helps  indeed  to  promote  the  movement; 
but  they  were  first  of  all  so  many  proofs  that  despite  all  the  contrary 
wayward  surface  indications,  the  strong  current  was  flowing  inde- 
pendently toward  the  just  and  perfect  union.  Having  acknowledged 
this  fundamental  fact  of  the  critical  years  between  Yorktown  and  the 
Constitution,  the  historian  is  free  to  give  just  and  discriminating 
praise  to  all  who  shared  at  that  time  in  redeeming  the  political  hope 
of  mankind,  to  give  due  but  not  exclusive  honor  to  Washington  and 
Thomas  Paine,  to  Madison  and  Hamilton  and  their  co-worthies. 

The  many  attempts,  isolated  or  systematic,  during  the  period 
from  1 78 1- 1 786,  to  reform  the  Articles  of  Confederation,  were  happily 
futile;  but  they  were  essential  in  the  training  of  the  people  in  the 
conscioiisness  of  the  nature  of  the  work  for  which  they  are  responsi- 
ble.    The  balances  must  come  slowly  to  a  poise.      Not  merely  union 


1438 


GEORGE    BANCROFT 


strong  and  for  a  time  effective,  was-  needed,  but  union  of  a  certain 
and  unprecedented  sort :  one  in  which  the  true  pledge  of  permanency 
for  a  continental  republic  was  to  be  found  in  the  federative  principle, 
by  which  the  highest  activities  of  nation  and  of  State  were  condi- 
tioned each  by  the  welfare  of  the  other.  The  people  rightly  felt, 
too,  that  a  Congress  of  one  house  would  be  inadequate  and  danger- 
oixs.  They  waited  in  the  midst  of  risks  -for  the  proper  hour,  and 
then,  not  reluctantly  but  resoltitely,  adopted  the  Constitution  as  a 
promising  experiment  in  government. 

Bancroft's  treatment  of  the  evolution  of  the  second  great  organic 
act  of  this  time  —  the  Northwestern  ordinance  —  is  no  less  just  and 
true  to  the  facts.  For  two  generations  men  had  snatched  at  the 
laurels  due  to  the  creator  of  that  matchless  piece  of  legislation ;  to 
award  them  now  to  Jefferson,  now  to  Nathan  Dane,  now  to  Rufus 
King,  now  to  Manasseh  Cutler.  Bancroft  calmly  and  clearly  shows 
how  the  great  law  grew  with  the  kindly  aid  and  watchful  care  of 
these  men  and  of  others. 

The  deliberations  of  the  Federal  Constitution  are  adequately 
recorded;  and  he  gives  fair  relative  recognition  to  the  work  and 
words  of  individuals,  and  the  actions  of  State  delegations  in  making 
the  great  adjustments  between  nation  and  States,  between  large  and 
small  and  slave  and  free  States.  From  his  account  we  infer  that  the 
New  Jersey  plan  was  intended  by  its  authors  only  for  temporary  use 
in  securing  equality  for  the  States  in  one  essential  part  of  the  gov- 
ernment, while  the  men  from  Connecticut  receive  credit  for  the  com- 
promise which  reconciled  nationality  with  true  State  rights.  Further 
to  be  noticed  are  the  results  of  the  exhaustive  study  which  Bancroft 
gave  to  the  matter  of  paper  money,  and  to  the  meaning  of  the  clause 
prohibiting  the  States  from  impairing  the  obligation  of  contracts.  He 
devotes  nearly  one  hundred  pages  to  ^The  People  of  the  States  in 
Judgment  on  the  Constitution,*  and  rightly;  for  it  is  the  final  act  of 
the  separate  States,  and  by  it  their  individual  wills  are  merged  in 
the  will  of  the  people,  which  is  one,  though  still  politically  dis- 
tributed and  active  within  State  lines.  His  summary  of  the  main 
principles  of  the  Constitution  is  excellent;  and  he  concludes  with  a 
worthy  sketch  of  the  organization  of  the  first  Congress  under  the 
Constitution,  and  of  the  inauguration  of  Washington  as  President. 

In  this  last  portion  of  the  <  History,*  while  all  of  his  merits  as  a 
historian  are  not  conspicuous,  neither  are  some  of  his  chief  defects. 
Here  the  tendency  to  philosophize,  to  marshal  stately  sentences,  and 
to  be  discursive,  is  not  so  marked. 

The  first  volume  of  Bancroft's  ^  History  of  t/-e  United  States  * 
was  published  in  1834,  when  the  democratic  spirit  was  finding  its  first 
full  expression  under  Jackson,  and  when  John  Marshall  was  finishing 


GEORGE   BANCROFT 


1439 


his  mighty  task  of  revealing  to  the  people  of  the  United  States  the 
strength  that  lay  in  their  organic  law.  As  he  put  forth  volume  after 
rolume  at  irregular  intervals  for  fifty  years,  he  in  a  measure  con- 
tinued this  work  of  bringing  to  the  exultant  consciousness  of  the 
people  the  value  of  their  possession  of  a  continent  of  liberty  and  the 
realization  of  their  responsibility.  In  the  course  of  another  gener- 
ation, portions  of  this  ^  History  of  the  United  States  ^  may  begin  to 
grow  antiquated,  though  one  of  the  most  brilliant  of  our  journalists 
not  long  ago  placed  it  among  the  ten  books  indispensable  to  every 
American;  but  time  cannot  take  away  Bancroft's  good  part  in  producing 
influences,  which,  however  they  may  vary  in  form  and  force,  will  last 
throughout  the  nation's  life. 


tok 


THE   BEGINNINGS   OF   VIRGINIA 

From  <  History  of  the  United  States  > 


THE  period  of  success  in  planting  Virginia  had  arrived;  yet  not 
till  changes  in  European  politics  and  society  had  molded 
the  forms  of  colonization.  The  Reformation  had  broken 
the  harmony  of  religious  opinion;  and  differences  in  the  Church 
began  to  constitute  the  basis  of  political  parties.  After  the  East 
Indies  had  been  reached  by  doubling  the  southern  promontory  of 
Africa,  the  great  commerce  of  the  world  was  carried  upon  the 
ocean.  The  art  of  printing  had  been  perfected  and  diffused;  and 
the  press  spread  intelligence  and  multiplied  the  facilities  of  in- 
struction. The  feudal  institutions,  which  had  been  reared  in  the 
middle  ages,  were  already  undermined  by  the  current  of  time 
and  events,  and,  swaying  from  their  base,  threatened  to  fall. 
Productive  industry  had  built  up  the  fortunes  and  extended  the 
influence  of  the  active  classes;  while  habits  of  indolence  and 
expense  had  impaired  the  estates  and  diminished  the  power  of  the 
nobility.  These  changes  produced  corresponding  results  in  the 
institutions  which  were  to  rise  in  America. 

A  revolution  had  equally  occurred  in  the  purposes  for  which 
voyages   were  undertaken.     The   hope  of  Columbus,  as  he  sailed 


,44o  GEORGE  BANCROFT 

to  the  west,  had  been  the  discovery  of  a  new  passag-e  to  the  East 
Indies.  The  passion  for  gold  next  became  the  prevailing  motive. 
Then  the  islands  and  countries  near  the  equator  were  made  the 
tropical  gardens  of  the  Europeans.  At  last,  the  higher  design 
was  matured:  to  plant  permanent  Christian  colonies;  to  establish 
for  the  oppressed  and  the  enterprising  places  of  refuge  and  abode; 
to  found  states  in  a  temperate  clime,  with  all  the  elements  of 
independent  existence. 

In  the  imperfect  condition  of  industry,  a  redundant  population 
had  existed  in  England  even  before  the  peace  with  Spain,  which 
threw  out  of  employment  the  gallant  men  who  had  served  under 
Elizabeth  by  sea  and  land,  and  left  them  no  option  but  to  en- 
gage as  mercenaries  in  the  quarrels  of  strangers,  or  incur  the 
hazards  of  ^*  seeking  a  New  World.  ^^  The  minds  of  many  persons 
of  intelligence  and  rank  were  directed  to  Virginia.  The  brave 
and  ingenious  Gosnold,  who  had  himself  witnessed  the  fertility 
of  the  western  soil,  long  solicited  the  concurrence  of  his  friends 
for  the  establishment  of  a  colony,  and  at  last  prevailed  with 
Edward  Maria  Wingfield,  a  merchant  of  the  west  of  England, 
Robert  Hunt,  a  clergyman  of  fortitude  and  modest  worth,  and 
John  Smith,  an  adventurer  of  rarest  qualities,  to  risk  their  lives 
and  hopes  of  fortune  in  an  expedition.  For  more  than  a  year 
this  little  company  revolved  the  project  of  a  plantation.  At  the 
same  time  Sir  Ferdinand©  Gorges  was  gathering  information  of 
the  native  Americans,  whom  he  had  received  from  Waymouth, 
and  whose  descriptions  of  the  country,  joined  to  the  favorable 
views  which  he  had  already  imbibed,  filled  him  with  the  strong- 
est desire  of  becoming  a  proprietary  of  domains  beyond  the 
Atlantic.  Gorges  was  a  man  of  wealth,  rank  and  influence;  he 
readily  persuaded  Sir  John  Popham,  Lord  Chief  Justice  of  Eng- 
land, to  share  his  intentions.  Nor  had  the  assigns  of  Raleigh 
become  indifferent  to  "western  planting'*;  which  the  most  dis- 
tinguished of  them  all,  "industrious  Hakluyt,'*  the  historian  of 
maritime  enterprise,  still  promoted  by  his  personal  exertions,  his 
weight  of  character,  and  his  invincible  zeal.  Possessed  of  what- 
ever information  could  be  derived  from  foreign  sources  and  a  cor- 
respondence with  eminent  navigators  of  his  times,  and  anxiously 
watching  the  progress  of  Englishmen  in  the  West,  his  extensive 
knowledge  made  him    a  counselor  in  every  colonial  enterprise. 

The  King  of  England,  too  timid  to  be  active,  yet  too  vain  to 
be   indifferent,    favored    the    design    of    enlarging   his    dominions. 


GEORGE   BANCROFT  1 441 

He  had  attempted  in  Scotland  the  introduction  of  the  arts  of  life 
among  the  Highlanders  and  the  Western  Isles,  by  the  establish- 
ment of  colonies;  and  the  Scottish  plantations  which  he  founded 
in  the  northern  counties  of  Ireland  contributed  to  the  affluence 
and  the  security  of  that  island.  When,  therefore,  a  company  of 
men  of  business  and  men  of  rank,  formed  by  the  experience  of 
Gosnold,  the  enthusiasm  of  Smith,  the  perseverance  of  Hakluyt, 
the  influence  of  Popham  and  Gorges,  applied  to  James  I.  for 
leave  "to  dediice  a  colony  into  Virginia,**  the  monarch,  on  the 
tenth  of  April,    1606,  readily  set  his  seal  to  an  ample   patent. 

The    first    colonial    charter,    under    which    the    English    were 
planted  in  America,  deserves  careful  consideration. 

Copyrighted  by  D.  Appleton  and  Company,  New  York. 


MEN  AND  GOVERNMENT   IN   EARLY  MASSACHUSETTS 
From  <  History  of  the  United  States  > 

THESE  better  auspices,  and  the  invitations  of  Winthrop,  won 
new  emigrants  from  Europe.  During  the  long .  summer 
voyage  of  the  two  hundred  passengers  who  freighted  the 
Griffin,  three  sermons  a  day  beguiled  their  weariness.  Among 
them  was  Haynes,  a  man  of  very  large  estate,  and  larger  affec- 
tions; of  a  "heavenly**  mind,  and  a  spotless  life;  of  rare  sagacity, 
and  accurate  but  unassuming  judgment;  by  nature  tolerant,  ever 
a  friend  to  freedom,  ever  conciliating  peace;  an  able  legislator; 
dear  to  the  people  by  his  benevolent  virtues  and  his  disinterested 
conduct.  Then  also  came  the  most  revered  spiritual  teachers  of 
two  commonwealths:  the  acute  and  subtle  Cotton,  the  son  of  a 
Puritan  lawyer;  eminent  in  Cambridge  as  a  scholar;  quick  in  the 
nice  perception  of  distinctions,  and  pliant  in  dialects;  in  manner 
persuasive  rather  than  commanding;  skilled  in  the  fathers  and 
the  schoolmen,  but  finding  all  their  wisdom  compactly  stored  in 
Calvin;  deeply  devout  by  nature  as  well  as  habit  from  child- 
hood; hating  heresy  and  still  precipitately  eager  to  prevent  evil 
actions  by  suppressing  ill  opinions,  yet  verging  toward  a  progress 
in  truth  and  in  religious  freedom;  an  avowed  enemy  to  democ- 
racy, which  he  feared  as  the  blind  despotism  of  animal  instincts 
in  the  multitude,  yet  opposing  hereditary  power  in  all  its  forms; 
desiring  a  government  of  moral  opinion,  according  to  the  laws  of 
universal  equity,  and  claiming  "the  ultimate  resolution  for  the 
III — 91 


1442  GEORGE   BANCROFT 

whole  body  of  the  people :  "  and  Hooker,  of  vast  endowments,  a 
strong  will  and  an  energetic  mind;  ingenuous  in  his  temper,  and 
open  in  his  professions;  trained  to  benevolence  by  the  discipline  of 
affliction;  versed  in  tolerance  by  his  refuge  in  Holland;  choleric, 
yet  gentle  in  his  affections;  firm  in  his  faith,  yet  readily  yieldnig 
to  the  power  of  reason;  the  peer  of  the  reformers,  without  their 
harshness;  the  devoted  apostle  to  the  humble  and  the  poor,  severe 
toward  the  proud,  mild  in  his  soothings  of  a  wounded  spirit, 
glowing  with  the  raptures  of  devotion,  and  kindling  with  the 
messages  of  redeeming  love;  his  eye,  voice,  gesture,  and  whole 
frame  animate  with  the  living  vigor  of  heart-felt  religion;  public- 
spirited  and  lavishly  charitable ;  and,  "  though  persecutions  and 
banishments  had  awaited  him  as  one  wave  follows  another,**  ever 
serenely  blessed  with  ^^  a  glorious  peace  of  soul  ** ;  fixed  in  his 
trust  in  Providence,  and  in  his  adhesion  to  that  cause  of  advan- 
cing civilization,  which  he  cherished  always,  even  while  it  remained 
to  him  a  mystery.  This  was  he  whom,  for  his  abilities  and 
services,  his  contemporaries  placed  ^*  in  the  first  rank  **  of  men ; 
praising  him  as  ^*  the  one  rich  pearl,  with  which  Europe  more 
than  repaid  America  for  the  treasures  from  her  coast.**  The 
people  to  whom  Hooker  ministered  had  preceded  him;  as  he 
landed  they  crowded  about  him  with  their  welcome.  "  Now  I 
live,**  exclaimed  he,  as  with  open  arms  he  embraced  them,  "now 
I  live  if  ye  stand  fast  in  the  Lord.** 

Thus  recruited,  the  little  band  in  Massachusetts  grew  more 
jealous  of  its  liberties.  "  The  prophets  in  exile  see  the  true  forms 
of  the  house.**  By  a  common  impulse,  the  freemen  of  the  towns 
chose  deputies  to  consider  in  advance  the  duties  of  the  general 
court.  The  charter  plainly  gave  legislative  power  to  the  whole 
body  of  the  freemen;  if  it  allowed  representatives,  thought  Win- 
throp,  it  was  only  by  inference;  and,  as  the  whole  people  could 
not  always  assemble,  the  chief  power,  it  was  argued,  lay  neces- 
sarily with  the  assistants. 

Far  different  was  the  reasoning  of  the  people.  To  check  the 
democratic  tendency,  Cotton,  on  the  election  day,  preached  to 
the  assembled  freemen  against  rotation  in  office.  The  right  of 
an  honest  magistrate  to  his  place  was  like  that  of  a  proprietor  to 
his  freehold.  But  the  electors,  now  between  three  and  four 
hundred  in  number,  were  bent  on  exercising  "  their  absolute 
power,**  and,  reversing  the  decision  of  the  pulpit,  chose  a  new 
governor  and  deputy.     The  mode  of  taking  the  votes  was  at  the 


GEORGE   BANCROFT  1443 

same  time  reformed;  and,  instead  of  the  erection  of  hands,  the 
ballot-box  was  introduced.  Thus  ^*  the  people  established  a  refor- 
mation of  such  things  as  they  judged  to  be  amiss  in  the  govern- 
ment. " 

It  was  further  decreed  that  the  whole  body  of  the  freemen 
should  be  convened  only  for  the  election  of  the  magistrates:  to 
these,  with  deputies  to  be  chosen  by  the  several  towns,  the 
powers  of  legislation  and  appointment  were  henceforward  in- 
trusted. The  trading  corporation  was  unconsciously  become  a 
representative  democracy. 

The  law  against  arbitrary  taxation  followed.  None  but  the 
immediate  representatives  of  the  people  might  dispose  of  lands 
or  raise  money.  Thus  early  did  Massachusetts  echo  the  voice  of 
Virginia,  like  deep  calling  unto  deep.  The  state  was  filled  with 
the  hum  of  village  politicians ;  '^  the  freemen  of  every  town  in 
the  Bay  were  busy  in  inquiring  into  their  liberties  and  privi- 
leges.** With  the  exception  of  the  principle  of  universal  suffrage, 
now  so  happily  established,  the  representative  democracy  was  as 
perfect  two  centuries  ago  as  it  is  to-day.  Even  the  magistrates, 
who  acted  as  judges,  held  their  office  by  the  annual  popular 
choice.  *^  Elections  cannot  be  safe  there  long,**  said  the  lawyer 
Lechford.  The  same  prediction  has  been  made  these  two  hun- 
dred years.  The  public  mind,  ever  in  perpetual  agitation,  is  still 
easily  shaken,  even  by  slight  and  transient  impulses;  but,  after 
all  vibrations,  it  follows  the  laws  of  the  moral  world,  and  safelv 
recovers  its  balance. 

CopjTighted  by  D.  Appleton  and  Company,  New  York. 


KING   PHILIP'S  WAR 

From  < History  of  the  United  States' 

THUS  was  Philip  hurried  into  "  his  rebellion  ** ;  and  he  is  reported 
to  have  wept  as  he  heard  that  a  white  man's  blood  had  been 
shed.  He  had  kept  his  men  about  him  in  arms,  and  had 
welcomed  every  stranger;  and  yet,  against  his  judgment  and  his 
will,  he  was  involved  in  war.  For  what  prospect  had  he  of  suc- 
cess ?  The  English  were  united ;  the  Indians  had  no  alliance : 
the  English  made  a  common  cause ;  half  the  Indians  were  allies 
of  the  English,  or  were  quiet  spectators  of  the  fight:  the  English 
had  guns  enough;   but  few  of  the   Indians  were  well  armed,  and 


1444  GEORGE   BANCROFT 

they  could  get  no  new  supplies:  the  English  had  towns  for  their 
shelter  and  safe  retreat;  the  miserable  wigwams  of  the  natives 
were  defenseless:  the  English  had  sure  supplies  of  food;  the 
Indians  might  easily  lose  their  precarious  stores.  Frenzy  prompted 
their  rising.  They  rose  without  hope,  and  they  fought  without 
mercy.      For  them  as  a  nation,   there  was  no  to-morrow. 

The  minds  of  the  English  were  appalled  by  the  horrors  of  the 
impending  conflict,  and  superstition  indulged  in  its  wild  inventions. 
At  the  time  of  the  eclipse  of  the  moon,  you  might  have  seen  the 
figure  of  an  Indian  scalp  imprinted  on  the  centre  of  its  disk. 
The  perfect  form  of  an  Indian  bow  appeared  in  the  sky.  The 
sighing  of  the  wind  was  like  the  whistling  of  bullets.  Some  heard 
invisible  troops  of  horses  gallop  through  the  air,  while  others 
found  the  prophecy  of  calamities  in  the  howling  of  the  wolves. 

At  the  very  beginning  of  danger  the  colonists  exerted  their 
wonted  energy.  Volunteers  from  Massachusetts  joined  the  troops 
from  Plymouth;  and,  within  a  week  from  the  commencement  of 
hostilities,  the  insulated  Pokanokets  were  driven  from  Mount 
Hope,  and  in  less  than  a  month  Philip  was  a  fugitive  among  the 
Nipmucks,  the  interior  tribes  of  Massachusetts.  The  little  army 
of  the  colonists  then  entered  the  territory  of  the  Narragansetts, 
and  from  the  reluctant  tribe  extorted  a  treaty  of  neutrality,  with 
a  promise  to  deliver  up  every  hostile  Indian.  Victory  seemed 
promptly  assured.  But  it  was  only  the  commencement  of  horrors. 
Canonchet,  the  chief  sachem  of  the  Narragansetts,  was  the  son  of 
Miantonomoh ;  and  could  he  forget  his  father's  wrongs  ?  Desola- 
tion extended  along  the  whole  frontier.  Banished  from  his  patri- 
mony, where  the  pilgrims  found  a  friend,  and  from  his  cabin, 
which  had  sheltered  the  exiles,  Philip,  with  his  warriors,  spread 
through  the  country,  awakening  their  brethren  to  a  warfare  of 
extermination. 

The  war,  on  the  part  of  the  Indians,  was  one  of  ambuscades 
and  surprises.  They  never  once  met  the  English  in  open  field; 
but  always,  even  if  eightfold  in  numbers,  fled  timorously  before 
infantry.  They  were  secret  as  beasts  of  prey,  skillful  marksmen, 
and  in  part  provided  with  firearms,  fleet  of  foot,  conversant  with 
all  the  paths  of  the  forest,  patient  of  fatigue,  and  mad  with  a 
passion  for  rapine,  vengeance,  and  destruction,  retreating  into 
swamps  for  their  fastnesses,  or  hiding  in  the  greenwood  thickets, 
where  the  leaves  mufiled  the  eyes  of  the  pursuer.  By  the  rapid- 
ity of  their  descent,  they  seemed  omnipresent  among  the  scattered 


GEORGE   BANCROFT 


1445 


villages,  which  they  ravished  like  a  passing  storm;  and  for  a  full 
year  they  kept  all  New  England  in  a  state  of  terror  and  excite- 
ment. The  exploring  party  was  waylaid  and  cut  off,  and  the 
mangled  carcasses  and  disjointed  limbs  of  the  dead  were  hung 
upon  the  trees.  The  laborer  in  the  field,  the  reapers  as  they 
sallied  forth  to  the  harvest,  men  as  they  went  to  mill,  the  shep- 
herd's boy  among  the  sheep,  were  shot  down  by  skulking  foes, 
whose  approach  was  invisible.  Who  can  tell  the  heavy  hours  of 
woman  ?  The  mother,  if  left  alone  in  the  house,  feared  the 
tomahawk  for  herself  and  children.;  on  the  sudden  attack,  the 
husband  would  fly  with  one  child,  the  wife  with  another,  and, 
perhaps,  one  only  escape;  the  village  cavalcade,  making  its  way 
to  meeting  on  Sunday  in  files  on  horseback,  the  farmer  holding 
the  bridle  in  one  hand  and  a  child  in  the  other,  his  wife  seated 
on  a  pillion  behind  him,  it  may  be  with  a  child  in  her  lap,  as 
was  the  fashion  in  those  days,  could  not  proceed  safely;  but,  at 
the  moment  when  least  expected,  bullets  would  whizz  among 
them,  sent  from  an  unseen  enemy  by  the  wayside.  The  forest 
that  protected  the  ambush  of  the  Indians  secured  their  retreat. 
Copyrighted  by  D.  Appleton  and  Company,  New  York. 


THE   NEW   NETHERLAND 
From  <  History  of  the  United  States  > 

DURING  the  absence  of  Stuyvesant  from  Manhattan,  the  war- 
riors of  the  neighboring  Algonkin  tribes,  never  reposing 
confidence  in  the  Dutch,  made  a  desperate  assault  on  the 
colony.  In  sixty-four  canoes  they  appeared  before  the  town,  and 
ravaged  the  adjacent  country.  The  return  of  the  expedition 
restored  confidence.  The  captives  were  ransomed,  and  industry 
repaired  its  losses.  The  Dutch  seemed  to  have  firmly  established 
their  power,  and  promised  themselves  happier  years.  New 
Netherland  consoled  them  for  the  loss  of  Brazil.  They  exulted 
in  the  possession  of  an  admirable  territory,  that  needed  no 
embankments  against  the  ocean.  They  were  proud  of  its  vast 
extent, —  from  New  England  to  Maryland,  from  the  sea  to  the 
Great  River  of  Canada,  and  the  remote  Northwestern  wilderness. 
They  sounded  with  exultation  the  channel  of  the  deep  stream, 
which  was  no  longer  shared  with  the  Swedes;  they  counted 
with  delight  its  many  lovely  runs  of  water,  on  which  the  beavers 


1446  GEORGE   BANCROFT 

built  their  villages;  and  the  great  travelers  who  had  visited 
every  continent,  as  they  ascended  the  Delaware,  declared  it  one 
of  the  noblest  rivers  in  the  world,  with  banks  more  inviting  than 
the  lands  on  the  Amazon. 

Meantime,  the  cotmtry  near  the  Hudson  gained  by  increasing 
emigration.  Manhattan  was  already  the  chosen  abode  of  mer- 
chants; and  the  policy  of  the  government  invited  them  by  its 
good-will.  If  Stuyvesant  sometimes  displayed  the  rash  despotism 
of  a  soldier,  he  was  sure  to  be  reproved  by  his  employers.  Did 
he  change  the  rate  of  duties  arbitrarily,  the  directors,  sensitive 
to  commercial  honor,  charged  him  *'  to  keep  every  contract 
inviolate."  Did  he  tamper  with  the  currency  by  raising  the 
nominal  vakie  of  foreign  coin,  the  measure  was  rebuked  as  dis- 
honest. Did  he  attempt  to  fix  the  price  of  labor  by  arbitrary 
rules,  this  also  was  condemned  as  unwise  and  impracticable. 
Did  he  interfere  with  the  merchants  by  inspecting  their  accounts, 
the  deed  was  censured  as  without  precedent  **  in  Christendom " ; 
and  he  was  ordered  to  "treat  the  merchants  with  kindness,  lest 
they  return,  and  the  country  be  depopulated."  Did  his  zeal  for 
Calvinism  lead  him  to  persecute  Lutherans,  he  was  chid  for  his 
bigotry.  Did  his  hatred  of  "the  abominable  sect  of  Quakers" 
imprison  and  afterward  exile  the  blameless  Bowne,  "let  every 
peaceful  citizen,"  wrote  the  directors,  "enjoy  freedom  of  con- 
science; this  maxim  has  made  our  city  the  asylum  for  fugitives 
from  every  land;  tread  in  its  steps,   and  you  shall  be  blessed." 

Private  worship  was  therefore  allowed  to  every  religion. 
Opinion,  if  not  yet  enfranchised,  was  already  tolerated.  The 
people  of  Palestine,  from  the  destruction  of  their  temple  an  out- 
cast and  a  wandering  race,  were  allured  by  the  traffic  and  the 
condition  of  the  New  World;  and  not  the  Saxon  and  Celtic 
races  only,  the  children  of  the  bondmen  that  broke  from  slavery 
in  Egypt,  the  posterity  of  those  who  had  wandered  in  Arabia, 
and  worshiped  near  Calvary,  found  a  home,  liberty,  and  a  burial 
place  on  the  island  of  Manhattan. 

The  emigrants  from  Holland  were  themselves  of  the  most 
various  lineage;  for  Holland  had  long  been  the  gathering-place 
of  the  unfortunate.  Could  we  trace  the  descent  of  the  emigrants 
from  the  Low  Countries  to  New  Netherland,  we  should  be 
carried  not  only  to  the  banks  of  the  Rhine  and  the  borders  of 
the  German  Sea,  but  to  the  Protestants  who  escaped  from 
France  after  the  massacre  of   Bartholomew's  Eve,   and  to  those 


GEORGE   BANCROFT  I^^y 

earlier  inquirers  who  were  swayed  by  the  voice  of  Huss  in  the 
heart  of  Bohemia.  New  York  was  always  a  city  of  the  world. 
Its  settlers  were  relics  of  the  first  fruits  of  the  Reformation, 
chosen  from  the  Belgic  provinces  and  England,  from  France  and 
Bohemia,  from  Germany  and  Switzerland,  from  Piedmont  and 
the  Italian  Alps. 

The  religious  sects,  which,  in  the  middle  ages,  had  been  fos- 
tered by  the  municipal  liberties  of  the  south  of  France,  were 
the  harbingers  of  modern  freedom,  and  had  therefore  been  sac- 
rificed to  the  inexorable  feudalism  of  the  north.  After  a  bloody 
conflict,  the  plebeian  reformers,  crushed  by  the  merciless  leaders 
of  the  military  aristocracy,  escaped  to  the  highlands  that  divide 
France  and  Italy.  Preserving  the  discipline  of  a  benevolent, 
ascetic  morality,  with  the  simplicity  of  a  spiritual  worship, 

*' When  all  our  fathers  worshiped  stocks  and  stones,** 

it  was  found,  on  the  progress  of  the  Reformation,  that  they  had 
by  three  centuries  anticipated  Luther  and  Calvin.  The  hurricane 
of  persecution,  which  was  to  have  swept  Protestantism  from  the 
earth,  did  not  spare  their  seclusion;  mothers  with  infants  were 
rolled  down  the  rocks,  and  the  bones  of  martyrs  scattered  on  the 
Alpine  mountains.  The  city  of  Amsterdam  offered  the  fugitive 
Waldenses  a  free  passage  to  America,  and  a  welcome  was  pre- 
pared in  New  Netherland  for  the  few  who  were  willing  to  emi- 
grate. 

The  persecuted  of  every  creed  and  every  clime  were  invited 
to  the  colony.  When  the  Protestant  churches  in  Rochelle  were 
razed,  the  Calvinists  of  that  city  were  gladly  admitted;  and  the 
French  Protestants  came  in  such  numbers  that  the  public  docu- 
ments were  sometimes  issued  in  French  as  well  as  in  Dutch  and 
English.  Troops  of  orphans  were  shipped  for  the  milder  destinies 
of  the  New  World;  a  free  passage  was  offered  to  mechanics;  for 
"population  was  known  to  be  the  bulwark  of  every  State.**  The 
government  of  New  Netherland  had  formed  just  ideas  of  the  fit 
materials  for  building  a  commonwealth ;  they  desired  "  farmers 
and  laborers,  foreigners  and  exiles,  men  inured  to  toil  and 
penury.**  The  colony  increased;  children  swarmed  in  every  vil- 
lage; the  advent  of  the  year  and  the  month  of  May  were  wel- 
comed with  noisy  frolics;  new  modes  of  activity  were  devised; 
lumber  was  shipped  to  France;  the  whale  pursued  off  the  coast; 
the  vine,  the  mulberry,  planted;    flocks  of  sheep  as  well  as  cattle 


1448  GEORGE   BANCROFT 

were  multiplied;  and  tile,  so  long  imported  from  Holland,  began 
to  be  manufactured  near  Fort  Orange.  New  Amsterdam  could, 
in  a  few  years,  boast  of  stately  buildings,  and  almost  vied  with 
Boston.  "This  happily  situated  province,"  said  its  inhabitants, 
"  may  become  the  granary  of  our  fatherland ;  should  our  Nether- 
lands be  wasted  by  grievous  wars,  it  will  offer  our  countrymen 
a  safe  retreat;  by  God's  blessing,  we  shall  in  a  few  years  become 
a  mighty  people.  ** 

Thus  did  various  nations  of  the  Caucasian  race  assist  in  colo- 
nizing our  central  States. 

Copyrighted  by  D.  Appleton  and  Company,  New  York. 


FRANKLIN 
From  < History  of  the  United  States* 

FRANKLIN  looked  quietly  and  deeply  into  the  secrets  of  nature. 
His  clear  understanding  was  never  perverted  by  passion,  nor 
corrupted  by  the  pride  of  theory.  The  son  of  a  rigid  Cal- 
vinist,  the  grandson  of  a  tolerant  Quaker,  he  had  from  boyhood 
been  familiar  not  only  with  theological  subtilities,  but  with  a 
catholic  respect  for  freedom  of  mind.  Skeptical  of  tradition  as 
the  basis  of  faith,  he  respected  reason  rather  than  authority;  and, 
after  a  momentary  lapse  into  fatalism,  he  gained  with  increasing 
years  an  increasing  trust  in  the  overruling  providence  of  God. 
Adhering  to  none  of  all  the  religions  in  -  the  colonies,  he  yet 
devoutly,  though  without  form,  adhered  to  religion.  But  though 
famous  as  a  disputant,  and  having  a  natural  aptitude  for  meta- 
physics, he  obeyed  the  tendency  of  his  age,  and  sought  by  obser- 
vation to  win  an  insight  into  the  mysteries  of  being.  The  best 
observers  praise  his  method  most.  He  so  sincerely  loved  truth, 
that  in  his  pursuit  of  her  she  met  him  half-way.  Without  preju- 
dice and  without  bias,  he  discerned  intuitively  the  identity  of  the 
laws  of  nature  with  those  of  which  humanity  is  conscious;  so  that 
his  mind  was  like  a  mirror,  in  which  the  imiverse,  as  it  reflected 
itself,  revealed  her  laws.  His  morality,  repudiating  ascetic  severi- 
ties and  the  system  which  enjoins  them,  was  indulgent  to  appe- 
tites of  which  he  abhorred  the  sway;  but  his  affections  were  of  a 
calm  intensity:  in  all  his  career,  the  love  of  man  held  the  mas- 
tery over  personal  interest.  He  had  not  the  imagination  which 
inspires  the  bard  or  kindles  the  orator;  but  an  exquisite  propriety, 


GEORGE   BANCROFT 


1449 


parsimonious  of  ornament,  gave  ease,  correctness,  and  graceful 
simplicity  even  to  his  most  careless  writings.  In  life,  also,  his 
tastes  were  delicate.  Indifferent  to  the  pleasures  of  the  table,  he 
relished  the  delights  of  music  and  harmony,  of  which  he  enlarged 
the  instruments.  His  blandness  of  temper,  his  modesty,  the 
benignity  of  his  manners,  made  him  the  favorite  of  intelligent 
society;  and,  with  healthy  cheerfulness,  he  derived  pleasure  from 
books,  from  philosophy,  from  conversation, — now  administering 
consolation  to  the  sorrower,  now  indulging  in  light-hearted 
gayety.  In  his  intercourse,  the  universality  of  his  perceptions 
bore,  perhaps,  the  character  of  humor;  but,  while  he  clearly  dis- 
cerned the  contrast  between  the  grandeur  of  the  universe  and  the 
feebleness  of  man,  a  serene  benevolence  saved  him  from  contempt 
of  his  race  or  disgust  at  its  toils.  To  superficial  observers,  he 
might  have  seemed  as  an  alien  from  speculative  truth,  limiting 
himself  to  the  world  of  the  senses;  and  yet,  in  study,  and  among 
men,  his  mind  always  sought  to  discover  and  apply  the  general 
principles  by  which  nature  and  affairs  are  controlled, — now  dedu- 
cing from  the  theory  of  caloric  improvements  in  fireplaces  and 
lanterns,  and  now  advancing  human  freedom  by  firm  inductions 
from  the  inalienable  rights  of  man.  Never  professing  enthusiasm, 
never  making  a  parade  of  sentiment,  his  practical  wisdom  was 
sometimes  mistaken  for  the  offspring  of  selfish  prudence;  yet  his 
hope  was  steadfast,  like  that  hope  which  rests  on  the  Rock  of 
Ages,  and  his  conduct  was  as  unerring  as  though  the  light  that 
led  him  was  a  light  from  heaven.  He  never  anticipated  action 
by  theories  of  self-sacrificing  virtue;  and  yet,  in  the  moments  of 
intense  activity,  he  from  the  abodes  of  ideal  truth  brought  down 
and  applied  to  the  affairs  of  life  the  principles  of  goodness,  as 
unostentatiously  as  became  the  man  who  with  a  kite  and  hempen 
string  drew  lightning  from  the  skies.  He  separated  himself  so 
little  from  his  age  that  he  has  been  called  the  representative  of 
materialism;  and  yet,  when  he  thought  on  religion,  his  mind 
passed  beyond  reliance  on  sects  to  faith  in  God;  when  he  wrote 
on  politics,  he  founded  freedom  on  principles  that  know  no 
change;  when  he  turned  an  observing  eye  on  nature,  he  passed 
from  the  effect  to  the  cause,  from  individual  appearances  to 
universal  laws;  when  he  reflected  on  history,  his  philosophic 
mind  found  gladness  and  repose  in  the  clear  anticipation  of  the 
progress  of  humanity. 

Copyrighted  by  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  New  York. 


T450  GEORGE   BANCROFT 


WOLFE   ON   THE   PLAINS   OF   ABRAHAM 
From  < History  of  the  United  States* 

BUT,  in  the  meantime,  Wolfe  applied  himself  intently  to  recon- 
noitring- the  north  shore  above  Quebec.  Nature  had  given 
him  good  eyes,  as  well  as  a  warmth  of  temper  to  follow 
first  impressions.  He  himself  discovered  the  cove  which  now 
bears  his  name,  where  the  bending  promontories  almost  form  a 
basin,  with  a  very  narrow  margin,  over  which  the  hill  rises  pre- 
cipitously. He  saw  the  path  that  wound  up  the  steep,  though  so 
narrow  that  two  men  could  hardly  march  in  it  abreast;  and  he 
knew,  by  the  number  of  tents  which  he  counted  on  the  summit, 
that  the  Canadian  post  which  guarded  it  could  not  exceed  a  hun- 
drcd.  Here  he  resolved  to  land  his  army  by  surprise.  To  mis- 
lead the  enemy,  his  troops  were  kept  far  above  the  town;  while 
Saunders,  as  if  an  attack  was  intended  at  Beauport,  set  Cook, 
the  great  mariner,  with  others,  to  sound  the  water  and  plant 
buoys  along  that  shore. 

The  day  and  night  of  the  twelfth  were  employed  in  prepara- 
tions. The  autumn  evening  was  bright;  and  the  general,  under 
the  clear  starlight,  visited  his  stations,  to  make  his  final  inspec- 
tion and  utter  his  last  words  of  encouragement.  As  he  passed 
from  ship  to  ship,  he  spoke  to  those  in  the  boat  with  him  of  the 
poet  Gray,  and  the  ^  Elegy  in  a  Country  Churchyard.*  **I,** 
said  he,  "  would  prefer  being  the  author  of  that  poem  to  the 
glory  of  beating  the  French  to-morrow;'*  and,  while  the  oars 
struck  the  river  as  it  rippled  in  the  silence  of  the  night  air  under 
the  flowing  tide,  he  repeated:  — 

<<  The  boast  of  heraldry,  the  pomp  of  power, 

And  all  that  beauty,  all  that  wealth  e'er  gave, 

Await  alike  the  inevitable  hour  — 

The  paths  of  glory  lead  but  to  the  grave.'* 

Every  officer  knew  his  appointed  duty,  when,  at  one  o'clock 
in  the  morning  of  the  thirteenth  of  September,  Wolfe,  Monck- 
ton,  and  Murray,  and  about  half  the  forces,  set  off  in  boats,  and, 
using  neither  sail  nor  oars,  glided  down  with  the  tide.  In  three 
quarters  of  an  hour  the  ships  followed;  and,  though  the  night 
had  become  dark,  aided  by  the  rapid  current,  they  reached  the 
cove   just   in   time   to   cover   the   landing.     Wolfe   and  the   troops 


GEORGE   BANCROFT 


1451 


with  him  leaped  on  shore;  the  light  infantry,  who  found  them- 
selves borne  by  the  current  a  little  below  the  intrenched  path, 
clambered  up  the  steep  hill,  staying  themselves  by  the  roots  and 
boughs  of  the  maple  and  spruce  and  ash  trees  that  covered  the 
precipitous  declivity,  and,  after  a  little  firing,  dispersed  the  picket 
which  guarded  the  height;  the  rest  ascended  safely  by  the  path- 
way. A  battery  of  four  guns  on  the  left  was  abandoned  to  Col- 
onel Howe.  When  Townshend's  division  disembarked,  the  English 
had  already  gained  one  of  the  roads  to  Quebec;  and,  advancing 
in  front  of  the  forest,  Wolfe  stood  at  daybreak  with  his  invinci- 
ble battalions  on  the  Plains  of  Abraham,  the  battle-field  of  the 
Celtic  and  Saxon  races. 

"  It  can  be  but  a  small  party,  come  to  burn  a  few  houses  and 
retire,**  said  Montcalm,  in  amazement  as  the  news  reached  him 
in  his  intrenchments  the  other  side  of  the  St.  Charles;  but,  obtain- 
ing better  information,  "Then,**  he  cried,  "they  have  at  last  got 
to  the  weak  side  of  this  miserable  garrison;  we  must  give  battle 
and  crush  them  before  mid-day.**  And,  before  ten,  the  two 
armies,  equal  in  numbers,  each  being  composed  of  less  than  five 
thousand  men,  were  ranged  in  presence  of  one  another  for  bat- 
tle. The  English,  not  easily  accessible  from  intervening  shallow 
ravines  and  rail  fences,  were  all  regulars,  perfect  in  discipline, 
terrible  in  their  fearless  enthusiasm,  thrilling  with  pride  at  their 
morning's  success,  commanded  by  a  man  whom  they  obeyed 
with  confidence  and  love.  The  doomed  and  devoted  Montcalm 
had  what  Wolfe  had  called  but  "  five  weak  French  battalions,  ** 
of  less  than  two  thousand  men,  "mingled  with  disorderly  peas- 
antry,** formed  on  commanding  ground.  The  French  had  three 
little  pieces  of  artillery;  the  English,  one  or  two.  The  two 
armies  cannonaded  each  other  for  nearly  an  hour;  when  Mont- 
calm, having  summoned  De  Bougainville  to  his  aid,  and  dis- 
patched messenger  after  messenger  for  De  Vaudreuil,  who  had 
fifteen  hundred  men  at  the  camp,  to  come  up  before  he  should 
be  driven  from  the  ground,  endeavored  to  flank  the  British  and 
crowd  them  down  the  high  bank  of  the  river.  Wolfe  counter- 
acted the  movement  by  detaching  Townshend  with  Amherst's 
regiment,  and  afterward  a  part  of  the  Royal  Americans,  who 
formed  on  the  left  with  a  double  front. 

Waiting  no  longer  for  more  troops,  Montcalm  led  the  French 
army  impetuously  to  the  attack.  The  ill-disciplined  companies 
broke  by  their  precipitation  and  the  unevenness  of  the  ground; 


1452 


GEORGE   BANCROFT 


and  fired  by  platoons,  without  unity.  Their  adversaries,  espe- 
cially the  Forty-third  and  the  Forty-seventh,  where  Monckton 
stood,  of  which  three  men  out  of  four  were  Americans,  received 
the  shock  with  calmness;  and  after  having,  at  Wolfe's  command, 
reserved  their  fire  till  their  enemy  was  within  forty  yards,  their 
line  began  a  regular,  rapid,  and  exact  discharge  of  musketry. 
Montcalm  was  present  everywhere,  braving  danger,  wounded,  but 
cheering  by  his  example.  The  second  in  command,  De  Senne- 
zergues,  an  associate  in  glory  at  Ticonderoga,  was  killed.  The 
brave  but  untried  Canadians,  flinching  from  a  hot  fire  in  the 
open  field,  began  to  waver;  and,  so  soon  as  Wolfe,  placing  him- 
self at  the  head  of  the  Twenty-eighth  and  the  Louisburg  grena- 
diers, charged  with  bayonets,  they  everywhere  gave  way.  Of 
the  English  officers,  Carleton  was  wounded;  Barre,  who  fought 
near  Wolfe,  received  in  the  head  a  ball  which  made  him  blind  of 
one  eye,  and  ultimately  of  both.  Wolfe,  also,  as  he  led  the 
charge,  was  wounded  in  the  wrist;  but  still  pressing  forward,  he 
received  a  second  ball;  and  having  decided  the  day,  was  struck 
a  third  time,  and  mortally,  in  the  breast.  ^*  Support  me,'*  he 
cried  to  an  officer  near  him ;  ^*  let  not  my  brave  fellows  see  me 
drop.'*  He  was  carried  to  the  rear,  and  they  brought  him  water 
to  quench  his  thirst.  **  They  run !  they  nm !  **  spoke  the  officer 
on  whom  he  leaned.  ^'  Who  run  ?  '*  asked  Wolfe,  as  his  life  was 
fast  ebbing.  ^^The  French,'*  replied  the  officer,  ^^give  way  every- 
where." ^^What,"  cried  the  expiring  hero,  ^*do  they  run  already? 
Go,  one  of  you,  to  Colonel  Burton;  bid  him  march  Webb's  regi- 
ment with  all  speed  to  Charles  River  to  cut  off  the  fugitives." 
Four  days  before,  he  had  looked  forward  to  early  death  with  dis- 
may. ^*  Now,  God  be  praised,  I  die  happy. "  These  were  his 
words  as  his  spirit  escaped  in  the  blaze  of  his  glory.  Night, 
silence,  the  rushing  tide,  veteran  discipline,  the  sure  inspiration 
of  genius,  had  been  his  allies;  his  battle-field,  high  over  the  ocean 
river,  was  the  grandest  theatre  for  illustrious  deeds;  his  victory, 
one  of  the  most  momentous  in  the  annals  of  mankind,  gave  to 
the  English  tongue  and  the  institutions  of  the  Germanic  race 
the  unexplored  and  seemingly  infinite  West  and  South.  He 
crowded  into  a  few  hours  actions  that  would  have  given  lustre 
to  length  of  life;  and,  filling  his  day  with  greatness,  completed 
it  before  its  noon. 

Copyrighted  by  D.  Appleton  and  Company,  New  York. 


GEORGE   BANCROFT  14C3 

WASHINGTON 
From  < History  of  the  United  States' 

THF.N,  on  the  fifteenth  of  June,  it  was  voted  to  appoint  a  gen- 
eral.     Thomas    Johnson,    of    Maryland,    nominated    George 
Washington ;    and   as  he  had  been  brought  forward  *^  at  the 
particular  request  of  the  people  of  New  England,**  he  was  elected 
by  ballot  unanimously. 

Washington  was  then  forty-three  years  of  age.  In  stature 
he  a  little  exceeded  six  feet;  his  limbs  were  sinewy  and  well- 
proportioned;  his  chest  broad;  his  figure  stately,  blending  dig- 
nity of  presence  with  ease.  His  robust  constitution  had  been 
tried  and  invigorated  by  his  early  life  in  the  wilderness,  the 
habit  of  occupation  out  of  doors,  and  rigid  temperance;  so  that' 
few  equaled  him  in  strength  of  arm,  or  power  of  endurance,  or 
noble  horsemanship.  His  complexion  was  florid ;  his  hair  dark 
brown;  his  head  in  its  shape  perfectly  round.  His  broad  nostrils 
seemed  formed  to  give  expression  and  escape  to  scornful  anger. 
His  eyebrows  were  rayed  and  finely  arched.  His  dark-blue  eyes, 
which  were  deeply  set,  had  an  expression  of  resignation,  and 
an  earnestness  that  was  almost  pensiveness.  His  forehead  was 
sometimes  marked  with  thought,  but  never  with  inquietude;  his 
countenance  was  mild  and  pleasing  and  full  of  benignity. 

At  eleven  years  old  left  an  orphan  to  the  care  of  an  excellent 
but  unlettered  mother,  he  grew  up  without  learning.  Of  arith- 
metic and  geometry  he  acquired  just  knowledge  enough  to  be 
able  to  practice  measuring  land;  but  all  his  instruction  at  school 
taught  him  not  so  much  as  the  orthography  or  rules  of  grammar 
of  his  own  tongue.  His  culture  was  altogether  his  own  work, 
and  he  was  in  the  strictest  sense  a  self-made  man;  yet  from  his 
early  life  he  never  seemed  uneducated.  At  sixteen  he  went  into 
the  wilderness  as  a  surveyor,  and  for  three  years  continued  the 
pursuit,  where  the  forests  trained  him,  in  meditative  solitude,  to 
freedom  and  largeness  of  mind;  and  nature  revealed  to  him  her 
obedience  to  serene  and  silent  laws.  In  his  intervals  from  toil, 
he  seemed  always  to  be  attracted  to  the  best  men,  and  to  be 
cherished  by  them.  Fairfax,  his  employer,  an  Oxford  scholar, 
already  aged,  became  his  fast  friend.  He  read  little,  but  wuth 
close  attention.  Whatever  he  took  in  hand  he  applied  himself 
to   with    care;    and   his   papers  which  have  been   preserved  show 


1454  GEORGE   BANCROFT 

how  he  almost  imperceptibly  gained  the  power  of  writing  cor. 
rectly;  always  expressing  himself  with  clearness  and  directness, 
often  with  felicity  of  language  and  grace. 

When  the  frontiers  on  the  west  became  disturbed,  he  at  nine- 
teen was  commissioned  an  adjutant-general  with  the  rank  of 
major.  At  twenty-one  he  went  as  the  envoy  of  Virginia  to  the 
council  of  Indian  chiefs  on  the  Ohio,  and  to  the  French  officers 
near  Lake  Erie.  Fame  waited  upon  him  from  his  youth;  and 
no  one  of  his  colony  was  so  much  spoken  of.  He  conducted  the 
first  military  expedition  from  Virginia  that  crossed  the  Allegha- 
nies.  Braddock  selected  him  as  an  aid ;  and  he  was  the  only  man 
who  came  out  of  the  disastrous  defeat  near  the  Monongahela 
with  increased  reputation,  which  extended  to  England.  The  next 
year,  when  he  was  but  four-and-twenty,  "  the  great  esteem "  in 
which  he  was  held  in  Virginia,  and  his  **  real  merit, '^  led  the 
lieutenant-governor  of  Maryland  to  request  that  he  might  be 
"  commissioned  and  appointed  second  in  command  '*  of  the  army 
designed  to  march  to  the  Ohio;  and  Shirley,  the  commander-in- 
chief,  heard  the  proposal  "with  great  satisfaction  and  pleasure, ^^ 
for  *  he  knew  no  provincial  officer  upon  the  continent  to  whom 
he  would  so  readily  give  that  rank  as  to  Washington.'^  In  1758 
he  acted  under  Forbes  as  a  brigadier,  and  but  for  him  that  gen- 
eral would  never  have  crossed  the  mountains. 

Courage  was  so  natural  to  him  that  it  was  hardly  spoken  of 
to  his  praise;  no  one  ever  at  any  moment  of  his  life  discovered 
in  him  the  least  shrinking  in  danger;  and  he  had  a  hardihood 
of  daring  which  escaped  notice,  because  it  was  so  enveloped  by 
superior  calmness  and  wisdom. 

His  address  was  most  easy  and  agreeable;  his  step  firm  and 
graceful ;  his  air  neither  grave  nor  familiar.  He  was  as  cheerful 
as  he  was  spirited,  frank  and  communicative  in  the  societ)'-  of 
friends,  fond  of  the  fox-chase  and  the  dance,  often  sportive  in 
his  letters,  and  liked  a  hearty  laugh.  "His  smile,''  writes  Chas- 
tellux,  "  was  always  the  smile  of  benevolence. "  This  joyousness 
of  disposition  remained  to  the  last,  though  the  vastness  of  his 
responsibilities  was  soon  to  take  from  him  the  right  of  displaying 
the  impulsive  qualities  of  his  nature,  and  the  weight  which  he  was 
to  bear  up  was  to  overlay  and  repress  his  gayety  and  openness. 

His  hand  was  liberal;  giving  quietly  and  without  observation, 
as   though   he    was   ashamed  of  nothing  but  being  discovered  in 


GEORGE   BANCROFT  1455 

doing  good.  He  was  kindly  and  compassionate,  and  of  lively 
sensibility  to  the  sorrows  of  others;  so  that,  if  his  country  had 
only  needed  a  victim  for  its  relief,  he  would  have  willingly 
offered  himself  as  a  sacrifice.  But  while  he  was  prodigal  of 
himself,  he  was  considerate  for  others;  ever  parsimonious  of  the 
blood  of  his  countrymen. 

He  was  prudent  in  the  management  of  his  private  affairs, 
purchased  rich  lands  from  the  Mohawk  valley  to  the  fiats  of  the 
Kanawha,  and  improved  his  fortune  by  the  correctness  of  his 
judgment;  but  as  a  public  man,  he  knew  no  other  aim  than  the 
good  of  his  country,  and  in  the  hour  of  his  country's  poverty  he 
refused  personal  emolument  for  his  service. 

His  faculties  were  so  well  balanced  and  combined  that  his 
constitution,  free  from  excess,  was  tempered  evenly  with  all  the 
elements  of  activity,  and  his  mind  resembled  a  well-ordered  com- 
monwealth; his  passions,  which  had  the  intensest  vigor,  owned 
allegiance  to  reason;  and  with  all  the  fiery  quickness  of  his  spirit, 
his  impetuous  and  massive  will  was  held  in  check  by  consummate 
judgment.  He  had  in  his  composition  a  calm,  which  gave  him 
in  moments  of  highest  excitement  the  power  of  self-control,  and 
enabled  him  to  excel  in  patience,  even  when  he  had  most  cause 
for  disgust.  Washington  was  offered  a  command  when  there  was 
little  to  bring  out  the  unorganized  resources  of  the  continent  but 
his  own  infiuence,  and  authority  was  connected  with  the  people 
by  the  most  frail,  most  attenuated,  scarcely  discernible  threads; 
yet,  vehement  as  was  his  nature,  impassioned  as  was  his  courage, 
he  so  retained  his  ardor  that  he  never  failed  continuously  to 
exert  the  attractive  power  of  that  infiuence,  and  never  exerted  it 
so  sharply  as  to  break  its  force. 

In  secrecy  he  was  unsurpassed;  but  his  secrecy  had  the  char- 
acter of  prudent  reserve,  not  of  cunning  or  concealment.  His 
great  natural  power  of  vigilance  had  been  developed  by  his  life 
in  the  wilderness. 

His  understanding  was  lucid,  and  his  judgment  accurate;  so 
that  his  conduct  never  betrayed  hurry  or  confusion.  No  detail 
was  too  minute  for  his  personal  inquiry  and  continued  super- 
vision; and  at  the  same  time  he  comprehended  events  in  their 
widest  aspects  and  relations.  He  never  seemed  above  the  object 
that  engaged  his  attention;  and  he  was  always  equal,  without  an 
effort,   to   the  solution  of  the  highest  questions,  even  when  there 


1456  GEORGE   BANCROFT 

existed  no  precedents  to  guide  his  decision.     In  the  perfection  of 
the  reflective  powers,  which  he  used  habitually,  he  had  no  peer. 

In  this  way  he  never  drew  to  himself  admiration  for  the 
possession  of  any  one  quality  in  excess,  never  made  in  council 
any  one  suggestion  that  was  sublime  but  impracticable,  never  in 
action  took  to  himself  the  praise  or  the  blame  of  undertakings 
astonishing  in  conception,  but  beyond  his  means  of  execution. 
It  was  the  most  wonderful  accomplishment  of  this  man  that, 
placed  upon  the  largest  theatre  of  events,  at  the  head  of  the 
greatest  revolution  in  human  affairs,  he  never  failed  to  observe 
all  that  was  possible,  and  at  the  same  time  to  bound  his  aspira- 
tions by  that  which  was  possible. 

A  slight  tinge  in  his  character,  perceptible  only  to  the  close 
observer,  revealed  the  region  from  which  he  sprung,  and  he 
might  be  described  as  the  best  specimen  of  manhood  as  developed 
in  the  South;  but  his  qualities  were  so  faultlessly  proportioned 
that  his  whole  country  rather  claimed  him  as  its  choicest  repre- 
sentative, the  most  complete  expression  of  all  its  attainments  and 
aspirations.  He  studied  his  country  and  conformed  to  it.  His 
countrymen  felt  that  he  was  the  best  type  of  America,  and 
rejoiced  in  it,  and  were  proud  of  it.  They  Hved  in  his  Hfe,  and 
made  his  success  and  his  praise  their  own. 

Profoundly  impressed  with  confidence  in  God's  providence, 
and  exemplary  in  his  respect  for  the  forms  of  public  worship,  no 
philosopher  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  more  firm  in  the  sup- 
port of  freedom  of  religious  opinion,  none  more  remote  from 
bigotry;  but  belief  in  God,  and  trust  in  His  overruling  power, 
formed  the  essence  of  His  character.  Divine  wisdom  not  only 
illumines  the  spirit,  it  inspires  the  will.  Washington  was  a  man 
of  action,  and  not  of  theory  or  words;  his  creed  appears  in  his 
life,  not  in  his  professions,  which  burst  from  him  very  rarely, 
and  only  at  those  great  moments  of  crisis  in  the  fortunes  of  his 
country,  when  earth  and  heaven  seemed  actually  to  meet,  and 
his  emotions  became  too  intense  for  suppression:  but  his  whole 
being  was  one  continued  act  of  faith  in  the  eternal,  intelligent, 
moral  order  of  the  universe.  Integrity  was  so  completely  the 
law  of  his  nature,  that  a  planet  would  sooner  have  shot  from  its 
sphere  than  he  have  departed  from  his  uprightness,  which  was 
so  constant  that  it  often  seemed  to  be  almost  impersonal.  "  His 
integrity   was   the   most   pure,  his   justice    the   most   inflexible,   I 


GEORGE   BANCROFT  l^^y 

have  ever  known, *^  writes  Jefferson:  <' no  motives  of  interest  or 
consanguinity,  of  friendship  or  hatred,  being  able  to  bias  his 
decision.  '* 

They  say  of  Giotto  that  he  introduced  goodness  into  the  art 
of  painting,  Washington  carried  it  with  him  to  the  camp  and 
the  Cabinet,  and  estabhshed  a  new  criterion  of  human  greatness. 
The  purity  of  his  will  confirmed  his  fortitude;  and  as  he  never 
faltered  in  his  faith  in  virtue,  he  stood  fast  by  that  which  he 
knew  to  be  just:  free  from  illusions;  never  dejected  by  the  appre- 
hension of  the  diflficulties  and  perils  that  went  before  him,  and 
drawing  the  promise  of  success  from  the  justice  of  his  cause. 
Hence  he  was  persevering,  leaving  nothing  unfinished;  devoid  of 
all  taint  of  obstinacy  in  his  firmness;  seeking  and  gladly  receiv- 
ing advice,  but  immovable  in  his  devotedness  to  right. 

Of  a  "retiring  modesty  and  habitual  reserve,"  his  ambition 
was  no  more  than  the  consciousness  of  his  power,  and  was  sub- 
ordinate to  his  sense  of  duty:  he  took  the  foremost  place,  for  he 
knew  from  inborn  magnanimity  that  it  belonged  to  him,  and  he 
dared  not  withhold  the  service  required  of  him;  so  that,  with  all 
his  humility,  he  was  by  necessity  the  first,  though  never  for  him- 
self or  for  private  ends.  He  loved  fame,  the  approval  of  coming 
generations,  the  good  opinion  of  his  fellow-men  of  his  own  time, 
and  he  desired  to  make  his  condiict  coincide  with  their  wishes; 
but  not  fear  of  censure,  not  the  prospect  of  applause,  could  tempt 
him  to  swerve  from  rectitude,  and  the  praise  which  he  coveted 
was  the  sympathy  of  that  moral  sentiment  which  exists  in  every 
human  breast,  and  goes  forth  only  to  the  welcome  of  virtue. 

There  have  been  soldiers  who  have  achieved  mightier  victories 
in  the  field,  and  made  conquests  more  nearly  corresponding  to 
the  boundlessness  of  selfish  ambition;  statesmen  who  have  been 
connected  with  more  startling  upheavals  of  society:  but  it  is  the 
greatness  of  Washington  that  in  public  trusts  he  used  power 
solely  for  the  public  good;  that  he  was  the  life  and  moderator 
and  stay  of  the  most  momentous  revolution  in  human  affairs,  its 
moving  impulse  and  its  restraining  power.  Combining  the  cen- 
tripetal and  the  centrifugal  forces  in  their  utmost  strength  and 
in  perfect  relations,  with  creative  grandeur  of  instinct  he  held 
ruin  in  check,  and  renewed  and  perfected  the  institutions  of  his 
country.  Finding  the  colonies  disconnected  and  dependent,  he 
left  them  such  a  united  and  well-ordered  commonwealth  as  no 
ni — 92 


J  .-3  GEORGE   BANCROFT 

visionary  had  believed  to  be  possible.      So  that  it  has  been  truly 
said,   "he  was  as  fortunate  as  great  and  good." 

This  also  is  the  praise  of  Washington:  that  never  in  the  tide 
of  time  has  any  man  lived  who  had  in  so  great  a  degree  the 
almost  divine  faculty  to  command  the  confidence  of  his  fellow- 
men  and  rule  the  willing.  Wherever  he  became  known,  in  his 
family,  his  neighborhood,  his  county,  his  native  State,  the  con- 
tinent, the  camp,  civil  life,  among  the  common  people,  in  foreign 
courts,  throughout  the  civilized  world,  and  even  among  the  sav- 
ages, he,   beyond  all  other  men,  had  the  confidence  of  his  kind. 

Copyrighted  by  D.  Appleton  and  Company,  New  York. 


JOHN  AND  MICHAEL  BANIM 

(1 798- 1 846)   (1 796- 1 874) 

^F  THE  writers  who  have  won  esteem  by  telling  the  pathetic 
stories  of  their  country's  people,  the  names  of  John  and 
Michael  Banim  are  ranked  among  the  Irish  Gael  not  lower 
than  that  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  among  the  British  Gael.  The  works  of 
the  Banim  brothers  continued  the  same  sad  and  fascinating  story  of 
the  "  mere  Irish  "  which  Maria  Edgeworth  and  Lady  Morgan  had  laid 
to  the  hearts  of  English  readers  in  the  late  eighteenth  and  early 
nineteenth  century  days.     The  Banim  family  was  one  of  those  which 

belonged  to  the  class  of  <* middlemen,"  peo- 
ple so  designated  in  Ireland  who  were 
neither  rich  nor  poor,  but  in  the  fortunate 
mean.  The  family  home  was  in  the  his- 
toric town  of  Kilkenny,  famous  alike  for 
its  fighting  confederation  and  its  fighting 
cats.  Here  Michael  was  born  August  5th, 
1796,  and  John  April  3d,  1798.  Michael 
lived  to  a  green  old  age,  and  survived  his 
younger  brother  John  twenty-eight  years, 
less  seventeen  days;  he  died  at  Booters- 
town,  August  30th,    1874. 

The  first  stories  of  this  brotherly  col- 
laboration in  letters  appeared  in  1825  with- 
as   recitals   contributed   for  instruction   and 


John  Banim 


out   mark   of  authorship, 

amusement  about  the  hearth-stone  of  an  Irish  household,  called  *The 


JOHN   AND   MICHAEL   BANIM  14^9 

O'Hara  Family.'  The  minor  chords  of  the  soft  music  of  the  Gaelic 
English  as  it  fell  from  the  tongues  of  Irish  lads  and  lasses,  whether 
in  note  of  sorrow  or  of  sport,  had  already  begun  to  touch  with  win- 
some tenderness  the  stolid  Saxon  hearts,  when  that  idyl  of  their 
country's  penal  days,  <  The  Bit  o'  Writin',*  was  sent  out  from  the 
O'Hara  fireside.  The  almost  instantaneous  success  and  popularity  of 
their  first  stories  speedily  broke  down  the  anonymity  of  the  Banims, 
and  publishers  became  eager  and  gain-giving.  About  two  dozen 
stories  were  published  before  the  death  of  John,  in  1842.  The  best- 
known  of  them,  in  addition  to  the  one  already  mentioned,  are  *■  The 
Boyne  Water,*  <  The  Croppy, >  and  <  Father  Connell.* 

The  fact  that  during  the  long  survival  of  Michael  no  more  of  the 
Banim  stories  appeared,  is  sometimes  called  in  as  evidence  that  the 
latter  had  little  to  do  with  the  writing  of  the  series.  Michael  and 
John,  it  was  well  known,  had  worked  lovingly  together,  and  Michael 
claimed  a  part  in  thirteen  of  the  tales,  without  excluding  his  brother 
from  joint  authorship.  Exactly  what  each  wrote  of  the  joint  pro- 
ductions has  never  been  known.  A  single  dramatic  work  of  the 
Banim  brothers  has  attained  to  a  position  in  the  standard  drama,  the 
play  of  < Damon  and  Pythias,'  a  free  adaptation  from  an  Italian  orig- 
inal, written  by  John  Banim  at  the  instance  of  Richard  Lalor  Shiel. 
The  songs  are  also  attributed  to  John.  It  is  but  just  to  say  that  the 
great  emigration  to  the  United  States  which  absorbed  the  Irish  dur- 
ing the  '40's  and  '50's  depreciated  the  sale  of  such  works  as  those  of 
the  Banims  to  the  lowest  point,  and  Michael  had  good  reason,  aside 
from  the  loss  of  his  brother's  aid,  to  lay  down  his  pen.  The  audi- 
ence of  the  Irish  story-teller  had  gone  away  across  the  great  west- 
ern sea.  There  was  nothing  to  do  but  sit  by  the  lonesome  hearth 
and  await  one's  own  to-morrow  for  the  voyage  of  the  greater  sea. 


THE   PUBLICAN'S   DREAM 
From  <The  Bit  o'  Writin'  and  Other  Tales  > 

THE  fair-day  had  passed  over  in  a  little  straggling  town  in  the 
southeast  of  Ireland,  and  was  succeeded  by  a  languor  pro- 
portioned to  the  wild  excitement  it  never  failed  to  create. 
But  of  all  in  the  village,  its  publicans  suffered  most  under  the 
reaction  of  great  bustle.  Few  of  their  houses  appeared  open  at 
broad  noon;  and  some  —  the  envy  of  their  competitors  —  continued 
closed  even  after  that  late  hour.  Of  these  latter,  many  were  of 
the  very  humblest  kind;  little  cabins,  in  fact,  skirting  the  outlets 
of  the  village,  or  standing  alone  on  the  roadside  a  good  distance 
beyond  it. 


1460  JOHN   AND   MICHAEL   BANIM 

About  two  o'clock  upon  the  day  in  question,  a  house  of 
**  Entertainment  for  Man  and  Horse,"  the  very  last  of  the  descrip- 
tion noticed  to  be  found  between  the  village  and  the  wild  tract 
of  mountain  country  adjacent  to  it,  was  opened  by  the  propri- 
etress,  who  had  that  moment  arisen  from  bed. 

The  cabin  consisted  of  only  two  apartments,  and  scarce  more 
than  nominally  even  of  two;  for  the  half -plastered  wicker  and 
straw  partition,  which  professed  to  cut  off  a  sleeping-nook  from 
the  whole  area  inclosed  by  the  clay  walls,  was  little  higher  than 
a  tall  man,  and  moreover  chinky  and  porous  in  many  places. 
Let  the  assumed  distinction  be  here  allowed  to  stand,  however, 
while  the  reader  casts  his  eyes  around  what  was  sometimes  called 
the  kitchen,  sometimes  the  tap-room,  sometimes  the  *^  dancing- 
flure."  Forms  which  had  run  by  the  walls,  and  planks  by  way  of 
tables  which  had  been  propped  before  them,  were  turned  topsy- 
turvy, and  in  some  instances  broken.  Pewter  pots  and  pints, 
battered  and  bruised,  or  squeezed  together  and  flattened,  and 
fragments  of  twisted  glass  tumblers,  lay  beside  them.  The  clay 
floor  was  scraped  with  brogue-nails  and  indented  with  the  heel  of 
that  primitive  foot-gear,  in  token  of  the  energetic  dancing  which 
had  lately  been  performed  upon  it.  In  a  corner  still  appeared 
(capsized,  however)  an  empty  eight-gallon  beer  barrel,  recently 
the  piper's  throne,  whence  his  bag  had  blown  forth  the  inspiring 
storms  of  jigs  and  reels,  which  prompted  to  more  antics  than 
ever  did  a  bag  of  the  laughing-gas.  Among  the  yellow  turf- 
ashes  of  the  hearth  lay  on  its  side  an  old  blackened  tin  kettle, 
without  a  spout, —  a  principal  utensil  in  brewing  scalding  water 
for  the  manufacture  of  whisky-punch;  and  its  soft  and  yet  warm 
bed  was  shared  by  a  red  cat,  who  had  stolen  in  from  his  own 
orgies,  through  some  cranny,  since  day-break.  The  single  four- 
paned  window  of  the  apartment  remained  veiled  by  its  rough 
shutter,  that  turned  on  leather  hinges;  but  down  the  wide  yawn- 
ing chimney  came  sufficient  light  to  reveal  the  objects  here 
described. 

The  proprietress  opened  her  back  door.  She  was  a  woman  of 
about  forty;  of  a  robust,  large-boned  figure;  with  broad,  rosy 
visage,  dark,  handsome  eyes,  and  well-cut  nose :  but  inheriting  a 
mouth  so  wide  as  to  proclaim  her  pure  aboriginal  Irish  pedigree. 
After  a  look  abroad,  to  inhale  the  fresh  air,  and  then  a  remon- 
strance (ending  in  a  kick)  with  the  hungry  pig,  who  ran, 
squeaking  and  grunting,    to  demand   his   long-deferred   breakfast, 


JOHN  AND   MICHAEL   BANIM  1461 

she  settled  her  cap,  rubbed  down  her  prauskcen  [coarse  apron], 
tucked  and  pinned  up  her  skirts  behind,  and  saying  in  a  loud, 
commanding-  voice,  as  she  spoke  into  the  sleeping-chamber,  <<Get 
up  now  at  once,  Jer,  I  bid  you,'^  vigorously  if  not  tidily  set  about 
putting  her  tavern  to  rights. 

During  her  bustle  the  dame  would  stop  an  instant,  and  bend 
her  ear  to  listen  for  a  stir  inside  the  partition;  but  at  last  losing 
patience  she  resumed:  — 

"  Why,  then,  my  heavy  hatred  on  you,  Jer  Mulcahy,  is  it 
gone  into  a  sanvaiin  [pleasant  drowsiness]  you  are,  over  again  ? 
or  maybe  you  stole  out  of  bed,  an'  put  your  hand  on  one  o' 
them  ould  good-for-nothing  books,  that  makes  you  the  laziest 
man  that  a  poor  woman  ever  had  under  one  roof  wid  her  ?  ay, 
an*  that  sent  you  out  of  our  dacent  shop  an'  house,  in  the  heart 
of  the  town  below,  an'  banished  us  here,  Jer  Mulcahy,  to  sell 
drams  o'  v/hisky  an'  pots  o'  beer  to  all  the  riff-raff  o'  the 
counthry-side,  instead  o'  the  nate  boots  an'  shoes  you  served  your 
honest  time  to  ?  '^ 

She  entered  his,  or  her  chamber,  rather,  hoping  that  she 
might  detect  him  luxuriantly  perusing  in  bed  one  of  the  muti- 
lated books,  a  love  of  which  (or  more  truly  a  love  of  indolence, 
thus  manifesting  itself)  had  indeed  chiefly  caused  his  downfall  in 
the  world.  Her  husband,  however,  really  tired  after'  his  unusual 
bodily  efforts  of  the  previous  day,  only  slumbered,  as  Mrs. 
Mulcahy  had  at  first  anticipated;  and  when  she  had  shaken  and 
aroused  him,  for  the  twentieth  time  that  morning,  and  scolded 
him  until  the  spirit-broken  blockhead  whimpered, —  nay,  wept,  or 
pretended  to  weep, —  the   dame   returned  to  her  household  duties. 

She  did  not  neglect,  however,  to  keep  calling  to  him  every 
half-minute,  until  at  last  Mr.  Jeremiah  Mulcahy  strode  into  the 
kitchen:  a  tall,  ill-contrived  figure,  that  had  once  been  well 
fitted  out,  but  that  now  wore  its  old  skin,  like  its  old  clothes, 
very  loosely;  and  those  old  clothes  were  a  discolored,  threadbare, 
half -polished  kerseymere  pair  of  trousers,  and  aged  superfine  black 
coat,  the  last  relics  of  his  former  Sunday  finery, — to  which  had 
recently  and  incongruously  been  added  a  calfskin  vest,  a  pair  of 
coarse  sky-blue  peasant's  stockings,  and  a  pair  of  brogues.  His 
hanging  cheeks  and  lips  told,  together,  his  present  bad  living 
and  domestic  subjection;  and  an  eye  that  had  been  blinded  by 
the  smallpox  wore  neither  patch-  nor  band,  although  in  bettei 
days  it  used  to  be  genteelly  hidden  from  remark, —  an  assumption 


1462  JOHN   AND   MICHAEL   BANIM 

of  consequence  now  deemed  incompatible  with  his  altered  •  condi- 
tion in  society. 

**  O  Caiith !  oh,  I  had  such  a  dhrame,**  he  said,  as  he  made 
his  appearance. 

**An'  I'll  go  bail  you  had,**  answered  Cauth,  ^*an'  when  do 
you  ever  go  asleep  without  having  one  dhrame  or  another,  that 
pesters  me  off  o'  my  legs  the  livelong  day,  till  the  night  falls 
again  to  let  you  have  another  ?  Musha,  Jer,  don't  be  ever  an' 
always  such  a  fool;  an'  never  mind  .the  dhrame  now,  but  lend  a 
hand  to  help  me  in  the  work  o'  the  house.  See  the  pewther 
there:  haive  it  up,  man  alive,  an'  take  it  out  into  the  garden, 
and  sit  on  the  big  stone  in  the  sun,  an'  make  it  look  as  well  as 
you  can,  afther  the  ill  usage  it  got  last  night;  come,  hurry,  Jer 
—  go  an'  do  what  I  bid  you.** 

He  retired  in  silence  to  ^Hhe  garden,**  a  little  patch  of  ground 
luxuriant  in  potatoes  and  a  few  cabbages.  Mrs.  Mulcahy  pursued 
her  work  till  her  own  sensations  warned  her  that  it  was  time  to 
prepare  her  husband's  inorning  or  rather  day  meal;  for  by  the 
height  of  the  sun  it  should  now  be  many  hours  past  noon.  So 
she  put  down  her  pot  of  potatoes;  and  when  they  were  boiled, 
took  out  a  wooden  trencher  full  of  them,  and  a  mug  of  sour 
milk,  to  Jer,  determined  not  to  summon  him  from  his  useful 
occupation  of  restoring  the  pints  and  quarts  to  something  of 
their  former  shape. 

Stepping  through  the  back  door,  and  getting  him  in  view,  she 
stopped  short  in  silent  anger.  His  back  was  turned  to  her, 
because  of  the  sun;  and  while  the  vessels,  huddled  about  in  con- 
fusion, seemed  little  the  better  of  his  latent  skill  and  industry, 
there  he  sat  on  his  favorite  round  stone,  studiously  perusing,  half 
aloud  to  himself,  some  idle  volume  which  doubtless  he  had  smug- 
gled into  the  garden  in  his  pocket.  Laying  down  her  trencher 
and  her  mug,  Mrs.  Mulcahy  stole  forward  on  tiptoe,  gained  his 
shoulder  without  being  heard,  snatched  the  imperfect  bundle  of 
soiled  pages  out  of  his  hand,  and  hurled  it  into  a  neighbor's 
cabbage-bed. 

Jeremiah  complained,  in  his  usual  half-crying  tone,  declaring 
that  "  she  never  could  let  him  alone,  so  she  couldn't,  and  he 
would  rather  list  for  a  soger  than  lade  such  a  life,  from  year's 
end  to  year's  end,  so  he  would.** 

"Well,  an'  do  then  —  an'  whistle  that  idle  cur  off  wid  you,** 
pointing  to  a   nondescript  puppy,  which  had   lain   happily   coiled 


JOHN   AND   MICHAEL   BANIM  I^g^ 

up  at  his  master's  feet  until  Mrs.  Mulcahy's  appearance,  but  that 
now  watched  her  closely,  his  ears  half  cocked  and  his  eyes  wide 
open,  though  his  position  remained  unaltered.  ^*  Go  along  to  the 
divil,  you  lazy  whelp  you!^*  —  she  took  up  a  pint  in  which  a  few 
drops  of  beer  remained  since  the  previous  night,  and  drained  it 
on  the  puppy's  head,  who  instantly  ran  off,  jumping  sideways, 
and  yelping  as  loud  as  if  some  bodily  injury  had  really  visited 
him  — "  Yes,  an'  now  you  begin  to  yowl,  like  your  masther,  for 
nothing  at  all,  only  because  a  body  axes  you  to  stir  your  idle 
legs  —  hould  your  tongiie,  you  foolish  baste  !^'  she  stooped  for  a 
stone  —  ^*  one  would  think  I  scalded  you.  '* 

"You  know  you  did,  once,  Cauth,  to  the  backbone;  an'  small 
blame  for  Shuffle  to  be  afeard  o'  you  ever  since,  ^*  said  Jer. 

This  vindication  of  his  own  occasional  remonstrances,  as  well 
as  of  Shuffle's,  was  fotmded  in  truth.  When  very  young,  just  to 
keep  him  from  running  against  her  legs  while  she  was  busy 
over  the  fire,  Mrs.  Mulcahy  certainly  had  emptied  a  ladleful  of 
boiling  potato-water  upon  the  poor  puppy's  back;  and  from  that 
moment  it  was  only  necessary  to  spill  a  drop  of  the  coldest  pos- 
sible water,  or  of  any  cold  liquid,  on  any  part  of  his  body,  and 
he  believed  he  was  again  dreadfully  scalded,  and  ran  out  of  the 
house  screaming  in  all  the  fancied  theories  of  torture. 

"  Will  you  ate  your  good  dinner,  now,  Jer  Mulcahy,  an'  prom- 
ise to  do  something  to  help  me,  afther  it? —  Mother  o'  Saints!'^ 
—  thus  she  interrupted  herself,  turning  towards  the  place  where 
she  had  deposited  the  eulogized  food — "see  that  yon  unlucky 
bird!  May  I  never  do  an  ill  turn  but  there's  the  pig  afther 
spilling  the  sweet  milk,  an'  now  shoveling  the  beautiful  white- 
eyes  down  her  throat  at  a  mouthful !  ^^ 

Jer,  really  afflicted  at  this  scene,  promised  to  work  hard"  the 
moment  he  got  his  dinner;  and  his  spouse,  first  procuring  a 
pitchfork  to  beat  the  pig  into  her  sty,  prepared  a  fresh  meal  for 
him,  and  retired  to  eat  her  own  in  the  house,  and  then  to  con- 
tinue her  labor. 

In  about  an  hour  she  thought  of  paying  him  another  visit  of 
inspection,  when  Jeremiah's  voice  reached  her  ear,  calling  out  in 
disturbed  accents,  "  Cauth !  Cauth !  a-vourneen!  For  the  love  o' 
heaven,  Cauth !  where  are  you  ?  "^ 

Running  to  him,  she  found  her  husband  sitting  upright, 
though  not  upon  his  round  stone,  amongst  the  still  untouched 
heap    of    pots    and   pints,    his    pock-marked    face    very    pale,    his 


1464  JOHN   AND   MICHAEL   BANIM 

single  eye  staring,  his  hands  clasped  and  shaking,  and  moisture 
on  his  forehead. 

"  What ! "  she  cried,  "  the  pewther  just  as  I  left  it,  over 
again ! " 

**  O  Cauth!  Cauth!  don't  mind  that  now  —  but  spake  to  me 
kind,   Cauth,   an'  comfort  me.^* 

**Why,  what  ails  you,  Jcr  a-vourneen?^^  affectionately  taking 
his  hand,  when  she  saw  how  really  agitated  he  was. 

^*  O  Cauth,  oh,  I  had  such  a  dhrame,  now,  in  earnest,  at  any 
rate ! » 

^*  A  dhrame !  ^*  she  repeated,  letting  go  his  hand,  **  a  dhrame, 
Jer  Mulcahy!  so,  afther  your  good  dinner,  you  go  for  to  fall 
asleep,  Jer  Mulcahy,  just  to  be  ready  wid  a  new  dhrame  for  me, 
instead  of  the  work  you  came  out  here  to  do,  five  blessed  hours 
ago !  ^' 

*^  Don't  scould  me,  now,  Cauth;  don't,  a-pet:  only  listen  to  me, 
an'  then  say  what  you  like.  You  know  the  lonesome  little  glen 
between  the  hills,  on  the  short  cut  for  man  or  horse,  to  Kilbrog- 
gan  ?  Well,  Cauth,  there  I  foiind  myself  in  the  dhrame;  and  I 
saw  two  sailors,  tired  afther  a  day's  hard  walking,  sitting  before 
one  of  the  big  rocks  that  stand  upright  in  the  wild  place;  an' 
they  were  ating  or  dhrinking,  I  couldn't  make  out  which;  and 
one  was  a  tall,  sthrong,  broad-shouldhered  man,  an'  the  other  was 
sthrong,  too,  but  short  an'  burly;  an'  while  they  were  talking  very 
civilly  to  each  other,  lo  an'  behould  you,  Cauth,  I  seen  the  tall 
man  whip  his  knife  into  the  little  man;  an'  then  they  both 
sthruggled,  an'  wrastled,  an'  schreeched  together,  till  the  rocks 
rung  again;  but  at  last  the  little  man  was  a  corpse;  an'  may  I 
never  see  a  sight  o'  glory,  Cauth,  but  all  this  was  afore  me  as 
plain  as  you  are,  in  this  garden!  an'  since  the  hour  I  was  born, 
Cauth,  I  never  got  such  a  fright;  an'  —  oh,  Cauth!  what's  that 
now  ?  * 

"  What  is  it,  you  poor  fool,  you,  but  a  customer,  come  at  last 
into  the  kitchen  —  an'  time  for  us  to  see  the  face  o'  one  this 
blessed  day.  Get  up  out  o'  that,  wid  your  dhrames  —  don't  you 
hear  'em  knocking?  I'll  stay  here  to  put  one  vessel  at  laste  to 
rights  —  for  I  see  I  must,^^ 

Jeremiah  arose,  groaning,  and  entered  the  cabin  through  the 
back  door.  In  a  few  seconds  he  hastened  to  his  wife,  more  ter- 
ror-stricken than  he  had  left  her,  and  settling  his  loins  against 
the  low  garden  wall,  stared  at  her. 


JOHN  AND  MICHAEL  BANIM  1465 

"Why,  then,  duoul's  in  you,  Jer  Mulcahy  (saints  forgive  me 
for  cursing!) — and  what's  the  matter  wid  you,  at-all  at-all  ? '* 

"They're  in  the  kitchen,'*  he  whispered. 

"Well,  an'  what  will  they  take?» 

"I  spoke  never  a  word  to  them,  Cauth,  nor  they  to  me;  —  I 
couldn't  —  an'  I  won't,  for  a  duke's  ransom:  I  only  saw  them 
stannin'  together,  in  the  dark  that's  coming  on,  behind  the  dour, 
an'  I  knew  them  at  the  first  look  —  the  tall  one  an'  the  little 
one. " 

With  a  flout  at  his  dreams,  and  his  cowardice,  and  his  good- 
for-nothingness,  the  dame  hurried  to  serve  her  customers.  Jere- 
miah heard  her  loud  voice  addressing  them,  and  their  hoarse 
tones  answering.  She  came  out  again  for  two  pints  to  draw 
some  beer,  and  commanded  him  to  follow  her  and  "discoorse 
the  customers.**  He  remained  motionless.  She  returned  in  a 
short  time,   and  fairly  drove  him  before  her  into  the  house. 

He  took  a  seat  remote  from  his  guests,  with  difficulty  pro- 
nouncing the  ordinary  words  of  "God  save  ye,  genteels,**  which 
they  bluffly  and  heartily  answered.  His  glances  towards  them 
were  also  few;  yet  enough  to  inform  him  that  they  conversed 
together  like  friends,  pledging  healths  and  shaking  hands.  The 
tall  sailor  abruptly  asked  him  how  far  it  was,  by  the  short  cut, 
to  a  village  where  they  proposed  to  pass  the  night — Kilbrog- 
gan  ?  —  Jeremiah  started  on  his  seat,  and  his  wife,  after  a  glance 
and  a  grumble  at  him,  was  obliged  to  speak  for  her  husband. 
They  finished  their  beer;  paid  for  it;  put  up  half  a  loaf  and  a 
cut  of  bad  watery  cheese,  saying  that  they  might  feel  more 
hungry  a  few  miles  on  than  they  now  did;  and  then  they  arose 
to  leave  the  cabin.  Jeremiah  glanced  in  great  trouble  around. 
His  wife  had  fortunately  disappeared;  he  snatched  up  his  old 
hat,  and  with  more  energy  than  he  could  himself  remember,  ran 
forward  to  be  a  short  way  on  the  road  before  them.  They  soon 
approached  him;  and  then,  obeying  a  conscientious  impulse,  Jere- 
miah saluted  the  smaller  of  the  two,  and  requested  to  speak 
with  him  apart.  The  sailor,  in  evident  surprise,  assented.  Jer 
vaguely  cautioned  him  against  going  any  farther  that  night,  as 
it  would  be  quite  dark  by  the  time  he  should  get  to  the  mount- 
ain pass,  on  the  by-road  to  Kilbroggan.  His  warning  was 
made  light  of.  He  grew  more  earnest,  asserting,  what  was  not 
the  fact,  that  it  was  "a  bad  road,**  meaning  one  infested  by 
robbers.      Still  the  bluff  tar  paid  no  attention,    and  was   turning 


1^66  JOHN  AND   MICHAEL   BANIM 

away.  **Oh,  sir;  oh,  stop,  sir,*'  resumed  Jeremiah,  taking  great 
courage,  "I  have  a  thing  to  tell  you;"  and  he  rehearsed  his 
dream,  averring  that  in  it  he  had  distinctly  seen  the  present 
object  of  his  solicitude  set  upon  and  slain  by  his  colossal  com- 
panion. The  listener  paused  a  moment;  first  looking  at  Jer. 
and  then  at  the  ground,  very  gravely:  but  the  next  moment 
he  burst  into  a  loud,  and  Jeremiah  thought,  frightful  laugh, 
and  walked  rapidly  to  overtake  his  shipmate.  Jeremiah,  much 
oppressed,  returned  home. 

Towards  dawn,  next  morning,  the  publican  awoke  in  an 
ominous  panic,  and  aroused  his  wife  to  listen  to  a  loud  knock- 
ing, and  a  clamor  of  voices  at  their  door.  She  insisted  that 
there  was  no  such  thing,  and  scolded  him  for  disturbing  her 
sleep.  A  renewal  of  the  noise,  however,  convinced  even  her 
incredulity,  and  showed  that  Jeremiah  was  right  for  the  first 
time  in  his  life,  at  least.  Both  arose,  and  hastened  to  answer 
the  summons. 

When  they  unbarred  the  front  door,  a  gentleman,  surrounded 
by  a  crowd  of  people  of  the  village,  stood  before  it.  He  had 
discovered  on  the  by-road  through  the  hills  from  Kilbroggan,  a 
dead  body,  weltering  in  its  gore,  and  wearing  sailor's  clothes; 
had  ridden  on  in  alarm;  had  raised  the  village;  and  some  of 
its  population,  recollecting  to  have  seen  Mrs.  Mulcahy's  visitors 
of  the  previous  evening,  now  brought  him  to  her  house  to  hear 
what  she  could  say  on  the  subject. 

Before  she  could  say  anything,  her  husband  fell  senseless  at 
her  side,  groaning  dolefully.  While  the  bystanders  raised  him, 
she  clapped  her  hands,  and  exalted  her  voice  in  ejaculations,  as 
Irishwomen,  when  grieved  or  astonished  or  vexed,  usually  do; 
and  now,  as  proud  of  Jeremiah's  dreaming  capabilities  as  she  had 
before  been  impatient  of  them,  rehearsed  his  vision  of  the  mur- 
der, and  authenticated  the  visit  of  the  two  sailors  to  her  house, 
almost  while  he  was  in  the  act  of  making  her  the  confidant  of 
his  prophetic  ravings.  The  auditors  stept  back  in  consternation,- 
crossing  themselves,  smiting  their  breasts,  and  crying  out,  "  The 
Lord  save  us !     The  Lord  have  mercy  upon  us !  " 

Jeremiah  slowly  awoke  from  his  swoon.  The  gentleman  who 
had  discovered  the  body  commanded  his  attendants  back  to  the 
lonesome  glen,  where  it  lay.  Poor  Jeremiah  fell  on  his  knees, 
and  with  tears  streaming  down  his  cheeks,  prayed  to  be  saved 
from  such  a  trial.     His  neighbors  almost  forced  him  along. 


JOHN   AND   MICHAE"L   BANIM  1467 

All  soon  gained  the  spot,  a  narrow  pass  between  slanting  piles 
of  displaced  rocks;  the  hills  from  which  they  had  tumbled  rising 
brown  and  barren  and  to  a  great  height  above  and  beyond  them. 
And  there,  indeed,  upon  the  strip  of  verdure  which  formed  the 
winding  road  through  the  defile,  lay  the  corpse  of  one  of  the 
sailors  who  had  visited  the    publican's  house  the   evening   before. 

Again  Jeremiah  dropt  on  his  knees,  at  some  distance  from 
the  body,  exclaiming,  "Lord  save  us!  —  yes!  oh,  yes,  neighbors, 
this  is  the  very  place !  —  only  —  the  saints  be  good  to  us  again  !  — 
'twas  the  tall  sailor  I  seen  killing  the  little  sailor,  and  here's  the 
tall  sailor  murthered  by  the  little  sailor.  ^^ 

^*  Dhrames  go  by  conthraries,  some  way  or  another,'*  observed 
one  of  his  neighbors;  and  Jeremiah's  puzzle  was  resolved. 

Two  steps  were  now  indispensable  to  be  taken;  the  county 
coroner  should  be  summoned,  and  the  murderer  sought  after. 
The  crowd  parted  to  engage  in  both  matters  simultaneously. 
Evening  drew  on  when  they  again  met  in  the  pass:  and  the  first, 
who  had  gone  for  the  coroner,  returned  with  him,  a  distance  of 
near  twenty  miles;  but  the  second  party  did  not  prove  so  success- 
ful. In  fact  they  had  discovered  no  clue  to  the  present  retreat 
of  the  supposed  assassin. 

The  coroner  impaneled  his  jury,  and  held  his  inquest  under  a 
large  upright  rock,  bedded  in  the  middle  of  the  pass,  such  as 
Jeremiah  said  he  had  seen  in  his  dream.  A  verdict  of  willful 
murder  against  the  absent  sailor  was  quickly  agreed  upon;  but 
ere  it  could  be  recorded,  all  hesitated,  not  knowing  how  to  indi- 
vidualize a  man  of  whose  name  they  were  ignorant. 

The  summer  night  had  fallen  upon  their  deliberations,  and  the 
moon  arose  in  splendor,  shining  over  the  top  of  one  of  the  high 
hills  that  inclosed  the  pass,  so  as  fully  to  illumine  the  bosom  of 
the  other.  During  their  pause,  a  man  appeared  standing  upon  the 
line  of  the  hill  thus  favored  by  the  moonlight,  and  every  eye 
turned  in  that  direction.  He  ran  down  the  abrupt  declivity 
beneath  him ;  he  gained  the  continued  sweep  of  jumbled  rocks 
which  immediately  walled  in  the  little  valley,  springing  from  one 
to  another  of  them  with  such  agility  and  certainty  that  it  seemed 
almost  magical;  and  a  general  whisper  of  fear  now  attested  the 
fact  of  his  being  dressed  in  a  straw  hat,  a  short  jacket,  and  loose 
white  trousers.  As  he  jumped  from  the  last  rock  upon  the  sward 
of  the  pass,  the  spectators  drew  back;  but  he,  not  seeming  to 
notice   them,  walked  up  to   the   corpse,  which  had  jiot  yet  been 


,^68  JOHN  AND  MICHAEL   BANIM 

touched;  took  its  hand;  turned  up  its  face  into  the  moonlight, 
and  attentively  regarded  the  features;  let  the  hand  go;  pushed 
his  hat  upon  his  forehead;  glanced  around  him;  recognized  the 
person  in  authority;  approached,  and  stood  still  before  him,  and 
said  "  Here  I  am,  Tom  Mills,  that  killed  long  Harry  Holmes,  and 
there  he  lies.^* 

The  coroner  cried  out  to  secure  him,  now  fearing  that  the 
man's  sturdiness  meant  farther  harm.  "No  need,"  resumed  the 
self-accused;  "here's  my  bread-and-cheese  knife,  the  only  weapon 
about  me ;  "  he  threw  it  on  the  ground :  "  I  come  back  just  to  ax 
you,  commodore,  to  order  me  a  cruise  after  poor  Harry,  bless  his 
precious  eyes,  wherever  he  is  bound." 

"  You  have  been  pursued  hither  ?  " 

"No,  bless  your  heart;  but  I  wouldn't  pass  such  another  watch 
as  the  last  twenty-four  hours  for  all  the  prize-money  won  at  Tra- 
falgar. 'Tisn't  in  regard  of  not  tasting  food  or  wetting  my  lips 
ever  since  I  fell  foul  of  Harry,  or  of  hiding  my  head  like  a 
cursed  animal  o'  the  yearth,  and  starting  if  a  bird  only  hopped 
nigh  me:  but  I  cannot  go  on  living  on  this  tack  no  longer;  that's 
it;  and  the  least  I  can  say  to  you,   Harry,  my  hearty." 

"  What  caused  your  quarrel  with  your  comrade  ? " 

"There  was  no  jar  or  jabber  betwixt  us,  d'you  see  me." 

"  Not  at  the  time,  I  tmderstand  you  to  mean ;  but  surely  you 
must  have  long  owed  him  a  grudge  ? " 

"  No,   but  long  loved  him ;   and  he  me. " 

"  Then,  in  heaven's  name,  what  put  the  dreadful  thought  in 
your  head  ? " 

"  The  devil,  commodore,  (the  horned  lubber !)  and  another 
lubber  to  help  him"  —  pointing  at  Jeremiah,  who  shrank  to  the 
skirts  of  the  crowd.  "  I'll  tell  you  every  word  of  it,  commodore, 
as  true  as  a  log-book.  For  twenty  long  and  merry  years,  Harry 
and  I  sailed  together,  and  worked  together,  thro'  a  hard  gale 
sometimes,  and  thro'  hot  sun  another  time;  and  never  a  squally 
word  came  between  us  till  last  night,  and  then  it  all  came  of 
that  Uibberly  swipes-seller,  I  say  again.  I  thought  as  how  it 
was  a  real  awful  thing  that  a  strange  landsman,  before  ever  he 
laid  eyes  on  either  of  us,  should  come  to  have  this  here  dream 
about  us.  After  falling  in  with  Harry,  when  the  lubber  and  I 
parted  company,  my  old  mate  saw  I  was  cast  down,  and  he  told 
me  as  much  in  his  own  gruff,  well-meaning  way;  upon  which  I 
gave  him  the  story,  laughing  at  it.      He  didn't  laugh  in  return. 


JOHN   AND   MICHAEL   BANIM  1460 

but  grew  glum  —  glummer  than  I  ever  seed  him;  and  I  wondered, 
and  fell  to  boxing  about  my  thoughts,  more  and  more  (deep  sea 
sink  that  cursed  thinking  and  thinking,  say  I !  —  it  sends  many 
an  honest  fellow  out  of  his  course) ;  and  <  It's  hard  to  know  the 
best  man's  mind,^  I  thought  to  myself.  Well,  we  came  on  the 
tack  into  these  rocky  parts,  and  Harry  says  to  me  all  on  a  sud- 
den, *Tom,  try  the  soundings  here,  ahead,  by  yourself  —  or  let 
me,  by  myself.^  I  axed  him  why?  *No  matter,^  says  Harry 
again,  ^but  after  what  you  chawed  about,  I  don't  like  your  com- 
pany any  farther,  till  we  fall  in  again  at  the  next  village.* 
<What,  Harr}',  *  I  cries,  laughing  heartier  than  ever,  ^are  you 
afeard  of  your  own  mind  with  Tom  Mills?*  *Pho,*  he  made 
answer,  walking  on  before  me,  and  I  followed  him. 

*^  ^  Yes,  *  I  kept  saying  to  myself,  ^  he  is  afeard  of  his  own 
mind  with  his  old  shipmate.*  'Twas  a  darker  night  than  this, 
and  when  I  looked  ahead,  the  devil  (for  I  know  'twas  he  that 
boarded  me !)  made  me  take  notice  what  a  good  spot  it  was  for 
Harry  to  fall  foul  of  me.  And  then  I  watched  him  making  way 
before  me,  in  the  dark,  and  couldn't  help  thinking  he  was  the 
better  man  of  the  two — a  head  and  shoulders  over  me,  and  a 
match  for  any  two  of  my  inches.  And  then  again,  I  brought  to 
mind  that  Harry  would  be  a  heavy  purse  the  better  of  sending 
me  to  Davy's  locker,  seeing  we  had  both  been  just  paid  off,  and 
got  a  lot  of  prize-money  to  boot;  —  and  at  last  (the  real  red 
devil  having  fairly  got  me  helm  a-la'-board)  I  argufied  with 
myself  that  Tom  Mills  would  be  as  well  alive,  with  Harry 
Holmes's  luck  in  his  pocket,  as  he  could  be  dead,  and  his  in 
Harry  Holmes's;  not  to  say  nothing  of  taking  one's  own  part, 
just  to  keep  one's  self  afloat,  if  so  be  Harry  let  his  mind  run  as 
mine  was  running. 

"  All  this  time  Harry  never  gave  me  no  hail,  but  kept  tack- 
ing through  these  cursed  rocks;  and  that,  and  his  last  words, 
made  me  doubt  him  more  and  more.  At  last  he  stopped  nigh 
where  he  now  lies,  and  sitting  with  his  back  to  that  high  stone, 
he  calls  for  my  blade  to  cut  the  bread  and  cheese  he  had  got  at 
the  village;  and  while  he  spoke  I  believed  he  looked  glummer 
and  glummer,  and  that  he  wanted  the  blade,  the  only  one 
between  us,  for  some'at  else  than  to  cut  bread  and  cheese; 
though  now  I  don't  believe  no  such  thing  howsumdever;  but  then 
I  did:  and  so,  d'you  see  me,  commodore,  I  lost  ballast  all  of  a 
sudden,  and  when  he  stretched  out  his  hand  for  the  blade  (hell's 


I470  JOHN   AND   MICHAEL   BANIM 

fire  blazing  up  in  my  lubberly  heart!)  —  <  Here  it  is,  Harr}%*  says 
I,  and  I  gives  it  to  him  in  the  side!  —  once,  twice,  in  the  right 
place!**  (the  sailor's  voice,  hitherto  calm,  though  broken  and 
rugged,  now  rose  into  a  high,  wild  cadence)  —  "and  then  how 
we  did  grapple!  and  sing  out  one  to  another!  ahoy!  j^eho!  aye; 
till  I  thought  the  whole  crew  of  devils  answered  our  hail  from 
the  hill-tops!  —  But  I  hit  you  again  and  again,  Harry!  before 
you  could  master  me,**  continued  the  sailor,  returning  to  the 
corpse,  and  once  more  taking  its  hand — "until  at  last  you 
struck, — my  old  messmate!  —  And  now  —  nothing  remains  for 
Tom  Mills  —  but  to  man  the  yard-arm!** 

The  narrator  stood  his  trial  at  the  ensuing  assizes,  and  was 
executed  for  this  avowed  murder  of  his  shipmate;  Jeremiah 
appearing  as  a  principal  witness.  Our  story  may  seem  drawn 
either  from  imagination,  or  from  mere  village  gossip:  its  chief 
acts  rest,  however,  upon  the  authority  of  members  of  the  Irish 
bar,  since  risen  to  high  professional  eminence;  and  they  can 
even  vouch  that  at  least  Jeremiah  asserted  the  truth  of  "  The 
Publican's  Dream.** 


T 


AILLEEN 

IS  not  for  love  of  gold  I  go, 

'Tis  not  for  love  of  fame; 
Tho'  Fortune  should  her  smile  bestow, 
And  I  may  win  a  name, 

Ailleen, 
And  I  may  win  a  name. 


And  yet  it  is  for  gold  I  go, 
And  yet  it  is  for  fame,  — 

That  they  may  deck  another  brow 
And  bless  another  name, 

Ailleen, 
And  bless  another  name. 

For  this,  but  this,  I  go  —  for  this 

I  lose  thy  love  awhile; 
And  all  the  soft  and  quiet  bliss 

Of  thy  young,   faithful  smile, 

Ailleen, 

Of  thy  young,  faithful  smile. 


JOHN   AND   MICHAEL   BANIM  147 1 

And  I  go  to  brave  a  world  I  hate 

And  woo  it  o'er  and  o'er, 
And  tempt  a  wave  and  try  a  fate 

Upon  a  stranger  shore, 

Ailleen, 

Upon  a  stranger  shore. 

Oh!  when  the  gold  is  wooed  and  won, 

I  know  a  heart  will  care ! 
Oh !  when  the  bays  are  all  my  own, 

I  know  a  brow  shall  wear, 

Ailleen, 

I  know  a  brow  shall  wear. 

And  when,  with  both  returned  again, 

My  native  land  to  see, 
I  know  a  smile  will  meet  me  there 

And  a  hand  will  welcome  me, 

Ailleen, 

And  a  hand  will  welcome  me! 


SOGGARTH   ARGON 
(« O    Priest,    O   Love  ! ») 
THE   IRISH    peasant's   ADDRESS   TO    HIS   PRIEST 

AM  I  the  slave  they  say, 
Soggarth  Aroon  ? 
Since  you  did  show  the  way, 
Soggarth  Aroon, 
Their  slave  no  more  to  be, 
While  they  would  work  with  me 
Ould  Ireland's  slavery, 
Soggarth  Aroon  ? 

Why  not  her  poorest  man, 

Soggarth  Aroon, 
Try  and  do  all  he  can, 

Soggarth  Aroon, 
Her  commands  to  fulfill 
Of  his  own  heart  and  will. 
Side  by  side  with  you  still, 

Soggarth  Aroon  ? 


;47a  JOHN   AND   MICHAEL   BANIM 

Loyal  and  brave  to  you, 
Soggarth  Aroon, 
Yet  be  no  slave  to  you, 
Soggarth  Aroon, 
Nor  out  of  fear  to  you 
Stand  up  so  near  to  you  — 
Och !  out  of  fear  to  you ! 
Soggarth  Aroon! 

Who,  in  the  winter's  night, 
'  Soggarth  Aroon, 

When  the  cowld  blast  did  bite. 

Soggarth  Aroon, 
Came  to  my  cabin  door, 
And  on  my  earthen  floor 
Knelt  by  me,  sick  and  poor, 

Soggarth  Aroon  ? 

Who,  on  the  marriage  day, 

Soggarth  Aroon, 
Made  the  poor  cabin  gay, 

Soggarth  Aroon ; 
And  did  both  laugh  and  sing, 
Making  our  hearts  to  ring, 
At  the  poor  christening, 
Soggarth  Aroon  ? 

Who,  as  friend  only  met, 

Soggarth  Aroon, 
Never  did  flout  me  yet, 
Soggarth  Aroon  ? 
And  when  my  hearth  was  dim 
Gave,  while  his  eye  did  brim, 
What  I  should  give  to  him, 
Soggarth  Aroon  ? 

Och !  you,   and  only  you, 

Soggarth  Aroon ! 
And  for  this  I  was  true  to  yon 

Soggarth  Aroon ; 
In  love  they'll  never  shake 
When  for  ould  Ireland's  sake 
We  a  true  part  did  take, 
Soggarth  Aroon! 


JOHN  AND   MICHAEL  BANIM  j    .- 


THE    IRISH   MAIDEN'S   SONG 

YoLi  know  it  now  —  it  is  betrayed 
This  moment  in  mine  eye, 
And  in  my  young  cheeks'  crimson  shade, 
And  in  my  whispered  sigh. 
You  know  it  now  —  yet  listen  now  — 
Though  ne'er  was  love  more  true, 
My  plight  and  troth  and  virgin  vow 
Still,  still  I  keep  from  you. 

Ever! 

Ever,  until  a  proof  you  give 

How  oft  you've  heard  me  say, 
I  would  not  even  his  empress  live 

Who  idles  life  away, 
Without  one  effort  for  the  land 

In  which  my  fathers'  graves 
Were  hollowed  by  a  despot  hand 

To  darkly  close  on  slaves  — 

Never ! 

See !   round  yourself  the  shackles  hang. 

Yet  come  you  to  love's  bowers. 
That  only  he  may  soothe  their  pang 

Or  hide  their  links  in  flowers  — 
But  try  all  things  to  snap  them  first 

And  should  all  fail  when  tried. 
The  fated  chain  you  cannot  burst 

My  twining  arms  shall  hide  — 

Everl 
ill — 93 


1474 


THEODORE   DE   BANVILLE 

(1823-1891) 


Jheodore  Faullain  DE  Banville  is  best  known  as  a  very 
skillful  maker  of  polished  artificial  verse.  His  poetry  stands 
high ;  but  it  is  the  poetry  not  of  nature,  but  of .  elegant 
society.  His  muse,  as  W.  E.  Henley  says,  is  always  in  evening  dress. 
References  to  the  classic  poets  are  woven  into  all  of  his  descriptions 
of  nature.  He  is  distinguished,  scholarly,  full  of  taste,  and  brilliant 
in  execution;  never  failing  in  propriety,  and  never  reaching  inspira- 
tion.     As    an    artist    in    words    and    cadences    he    has   few   superiors. 

These  qualities  are  partly  acquired,  and 
partly  the  result  of  birth.  Born  in  1823, 
the  son  of  a  naval  ofhcer,  from  his  earliest 
years  he  devoted  himself  to  literature.  His 
birthplace,  Moulins,  an  old  provincial  town 
on  the  banks  of  the  Allier,  where  he  spent 
a  happy  childhood,  made  little  impression 
on  him.  Still  almost  a  child  he  went  to 
Paris,  where  he  led  a  life  without  events, — 
without  even  a  marriage  or  an  election  to 
the  Academy;  he  died  March  13th,  1891. 
His  place  was  among  the  society  people 
and  the  artists;  the  painter  Courbet  and 
the  writers  Miirger,  Baudelaire,  and  Gautier 
were  among  his  closest  friends.  He  first 
attracted  attention  in  1848  by  the  publication  of  a  volume  of  verse, 
*The  Caryatids.^  In  1857  came  another,  <  Odes  Funambulesque,* 
and  later  another  series  under  the  same  title,  the  two  together  con- 
taining his  best  work  in  verse.  Here  he  stands  highest;  though 
he  wrote  also  many  plays,  one  of  which,  ^Gringoire,*  has  been  acted 
in  various  translations.  *  The  Wife  of  Socrates  *  also  holds  the  stage. 
Like  his  other  work,  his  drama  is  artificial,  refined,  and  skillful.  He 
presents  a  marked  instance  of  the  artist  working  for  art's  sake. 
During  the  latter  years  of  his  life  he  wrote  mostly  prose,  and  he  has 
left  many  well-drawn  portraits  of  his  contemporaries,  in  addition  to 
several  books  of  criticism,  with  much  color  and  charm,  but  little 
definiteness.  He  was  always  vague,  for  facts  did  not  interest  him ;  but 
he  had  the  power  of  making  his  remote,  unreal  world  attractive,  and 
among  the  writers  of  the  school  of  Gautier  he  stands  among  the  first. 


De  Banville 


THEODORE  DE   BANVILLE  1475 

LE   CAF6 
From  <The  Soul  of  Paris  > 

IMAGINE  a  place  where  you  do  not   endure   the   horror  of  being 
alone,    and   yet   have   the    freedom   of   solitude.      There,    free 

from  the  dust,  the  boredom,  the  vulgarities  of  a  household, 
you  reflect  at  ease,  comfortably  seated  before  a  table,  unincum- 
bered by  all  the  things  that  oppress  you  in  houses;  for  if  useless 
objects  and  papers  had  accumulated  here  they  would  have  been 
promptly  removed.  You  smoke  slowly,  quietly,  like  a  Turk,  fol- 
lowing your  thoughts  among  the  blue  curves. 

If  you  have  a  voluptuous  desire  to  taste  some  warm  or 
refreshing  beverage,  well-trained  waiters  bring  it  to  you  immedi- 
ately. If  you  feel  like  talking  with  clever  men  who  will  not 
bully  you,  you  have  within  reach  light  sheets  on  which  are  printed 
winged  thoughts,  rapid,  written  for  you,  which  you  are  not  forced 
to  bind  and  preserve  in  a  library  when  they  have  ceased  to 
please  you.  This  place,  the  paradise  of  civilization,  the  last  and 
inviolable  refuge  of  the  free  man,  is  the  cafe. 

It  is  the  cafe;  but  in  the  ideal,  as  we  dream  it,  as  it  ought  to 
be.  The  lack  of  room  and  the  fabulous  cost  of  land  on  the 
boulevards  of  Paris  make  it  hideous  in  actuality.  In  these  little 
boxes  —  of  which  the  rent  is  that  of  a  palace  —  one  would  be 
foolish  to  look  for  the  space  of  a  vestiary.  Besides,  the  walls 
are  decorated  with  stovepipe  hats  and  overcoats  hung  on  clothes- 
pegs —  an  abominable  sight,  for  which  atonement  is  offered  by 
multitudes  of  white  panels  and  ignoble  gilding,  imitations  made 
by  economical  process. 

And  (let  us  not  deceive  ourselves)  the  overcoat,  with  which 
one  never  knows  what  to  do,  and  which  makes  us  worry  every- 
where,—  in  society,  at  the  theatre,  at  balls, — is  the  great  enemy 
and  the  abominable  enslavement  of  modern  life.  Happy  the 
gentlemen  of  the  age  of  Louis  XIV.,  who  in  the  morning  dressed 
themselves  for  all  day,  in  satin  and  velvet,  their  brows  protected 
by  wigs,  and  who  remained  superb  even  when  beaten  by  the 
storm,  and  who,  moreover,  brave  as  lions,  ran  the  risk  of  pneu- 
monia even  if  they  had  to  put  on,  one  outside  the  other,  the 
innumerable  waistcoats  of  Jodelet  in  *■  Les  Precieuses   Ridicules ' ' 

"  How  shall  I  find  my  overcoat  and  my  wife's  party  cape  ?  '^  is 
the  great  and  only  cry,  the  Hamlet-monologue  of  the  modern 
man,   that  poisons  every  minute  of  his  life  and  makes  him  look 


1476 


THEODORE   DE   BANVILLE 


with  resignation  toward  his  dying  hour.  On  the  morning  after 
a  ball  given  by  Marshal  MacMahon  nothing  is  found:  the  over- 
coats have  disappeared;  the  satin  cloaks,  the  boas,  the  lace  scarfs 
have  gone  up  in  smoke ;  and  the  women  must  rush  in  despair 
through  the  driving  snow  while  their  husbands  try  to  button 
their  evening  coats,  which  will  not  button ! 

One  evening,  at  a  party  given  by  the  wife  of  the  President 
of  the  Chamber  of  Deputies,  at  which  the  gardens  were  lighted 
by  electricity,  Gambetta  suddenly  wished  to  show  some  of  his 
guests  a  curiosity,  and  invited  .them  to  go  down  with  him  into 
the  bushes.  A  valet  hastened  to  hand  him  his  overcoat,  but  the 
guests  did  not  dare  to  ask  for  theirs,  and  followed  Gambetta  as 
they  were!     However,   I  believe  one  or  two  of  them  survived. 

At  the  cafe  no  one  carries  off  your  overcoat,  no  one  hides  it; 
but  they  are  all  hi:ng  up,  spread  out  on  the  wall  like  master- 
pieces of  art,  treated  as  if  they  were  portraits  of  Mona  Lisa  or 
Violante,  and  you  have  them  before  your  eyes,  you  see  them  con- 
tinually. Is  there  not  reason  to  curse  the  moment  your  eyes 
first  saw  the  light?  One  may,  as  I  have  said,  read  the  papers; 
or  rather  one  might  read  them  if  they  were  not  hung  on  those 
abominable  racks,  which  remove  them  a  mile  from  you  and  force 
you  to  see  them  on  your  horizon. 

As  to  the  drinks,  give  up  all  hope;  for  the  owner  of  the  cafd 
has  no  proper  place  for  their  preparation,  and  his  rent  is  so  enor- 
mous that  he  has  to  make  the  best  even  of  the  quality  he  sells. 
But  aside  from  this  reason,  the  drinks  could  not  be  good,  because 
there  are  too  many  of  them.  The  last  thing  one  finds  at  these 
coffee-houses  is  coffee.  It  is  delicious,  divine,  in  those  little  Ori- 
ental shops  where  it  is  made  to  order  for  each  drinker  in  a  spe- 
cial little  pot.  As  to  syrups,  how  many  are  there  in  Pans  ?  In 
what  inconceivable  place  can  they  keep  the  jars  containing  the 
fruit  juices  needed  to  make  them  ?  A  few  real  ladies,  rich,  well- 
bom,  good  housekeepers,  not  reduced  to  slavery  by  the  great 
shops,  who  do  not  rouge  or  paint  their  cheeks,  still  know  how  to 
make  in  their  own  homes  good  syrups  from  the  fruit  of  their 
gardens  and  their  vineyards.  But  they  naturally  do  not  give 
them  away  or  sell  them  to  the  keepers  of  caf^s,  but  keep  them 
to  gladden  their  flaxen-haired  children. 

Such  as  it  is,  —  with  its  failings  and  its  vices,  even  a  full  cen- 
tury after  the  fame  of  Procope,  —  the  cafd,  which  we  cannot  drive 
out  of  our  memories,  has  been  the  asylum  and  the  refuge  of 
many  charming   spirits.      The    old   Tabourey,    who,    after  having 


THEODORE   DE   BANVILLE  14^^ 

been  illustrious,  now  has  a  sort  of  half  popularity  and  a  pewter 
bar,  formerly  heard  the  captivating  conversations  of  Barbey  and 
of  Aurevilly,  who  were  rivals  in  the  noblest  salons,  and  who 
sometimes  preferred  to  converse  seated  before  a  marble  table  in 
a  hall  from  which  one  could  see  the  foliage  and  the  flowers  of 
the  Luxembourg.  Baudelaire  also  talked  there,  with  his  clear 
caressing  voice  dropping  diamonds  and  precious  stones,  like  the 
princess  of  the  fairy  tale,  from  beautiful  red,  somewhat  thick  lips. 

A  problem  with  no  possible  solution  holds  in  check  the  writers 
and  the  artists  of  Paris.  When  one  has  worked  hard  all  day  it  is 
pleasant  to  take  a  seat,  during  the  short  stroll  that  precedes  the 
dinner,  to  meet  one's  comrades  and  talk  with  them  of  everything 
but  politics.  The  only  favorable  place  for  these  necessary  acci- 
dental meetings  is  the  cafe;  but  is  the  game  worth  the  candle, 
or,  to  speak  more  exactly,  the  blinding  gas-jets  ?  Is  it  worth 
while,  for  the  pleasure  of  exchanging  words,  to  accept  criminal 
absinthe,  unnatural  bitters,  tragic  vermouth,  concocted  in  the 
sombre    laboratories   of   the    cafes   by  frightful    parasites  ? 

Aurelien  Scholl,  who,  being  a  fine  poet  and  excellent  writer, 
is  naturally  a  practical  man,  had  a  pleasing  idea.  He  wished 
that  the  reunions  in  the  cafes  might  continue  at  the  absinthe 
hour,  but  without  the  absinthe!  A  very  honest  man,  chosen  for 
that  purpose,  would  pour  out  for  the  passers-by,  in  place  of  every- 
thing else,  excellent  claret  with  quinquina,  which  would  have  the 
double  advantage  of  not  poisoning  them  and  of  giving  them 
a  wholesome  and  comforting  drink.  But  this  seductive  dream 
could  never  be  realized.  Of  course,  honest  men  exist  in  great 
numbers,  among  keepers  of  cafes  as  well  as  in  other  walks  of 
life;  but  the  individual  honest  man  could  not  be  found  who 
would  be  willing  to  pour  out  quinquina  wine  in  which  there  was 
both  quinquina  and  wine. 

In  the  Palais  Royal  there  used  to  be  a  cafe  which  had 
retained  Empire  fittings  and  oil  lamps.  One  found  there  real 
wine,  real  coffee,  real  milk,  and  good  beefsteaks.  Roqueplan, 
Arsene  Houssaye,  Michel  Levy,  and,  the  handsome  Fiorentino 
used  to  breakfast  there,  and  they  knew  how  to  get  the  best 
mushrooms.  The  proprietor  of  the  cafe  had  said  that  as  soon 
as  he  could  no  longer  make  a  living  by  selling  genuine  articles, 
he  would  not  give  up  his  stock  in  trade  to  another,  but  would 
sell  his  furniture  and  shut  up  shop.  He  kept  his  word.  He 
was  a  hero. 


1478 


THEODORE   DE   BANVILLE 


BALLADE   ON   THE  MYSTERIOUS   HOSTS   OF   THE   FOREST 

From  <The  Caryatids  > 

STILL  sing  the  mocking  fairies,  as  of  old, 
Beneath  the  shade  of  thorn  and  holly-tree; 
The  west  wind  breathes  upon  them  pure  and  cold, 
And  still  wolves  dread  Diana  roving  free, 
In  secret  woodland  with  her  company. 
'Tis  thought  the  peasants'  hovels  know  her  rite 
When  now  the  wolds  are  bathed  in  silver  light, 

And  first  the  moonrise  breaks  the  dusky  gray; 
Then  down  the  dells,  with  blown  soft  hair  and  bright, 
And  through  the  dim  wood,   Dian  thrids  her  way. 

With  water-weeds  twined  in  their  locks  of  gold 
The  strange  cold  forest-fairies  dance  in  glee; 

Sylphs  over-timorous  and  over-bold 

Haunt  the  dark  hollows  where  the  dwarf  may  be. 
The  wild  red  dwarf,  the  nixies'  enemy: 

Then,   'mid  their  mirth  and  laughter  and  aflfright. 

The  sudden  goddess  enters,  tall  and  white. 

With  one  long  sigh  for  summers  passed  away; 

The  swift  feet  tear  the  ivy  nets  outright. 

And  through  the  dim  wood  Dian  thrids  her  way. 

She  gleans  her  sylvan  trophies;  down  the  wold 
She  hears  the  sobbing  of  the  stags  that  flee, 

Mixed  with  the  music  of  the  hunting  rolled. 
But  her  delight  is  all  in  archery, 
And  naught  of  ruth  and  pity  wotteth  she 

More  than  the  hounds  that  follow  on  the  flight; 

The  tall  nymph  draws  a  golden  bow  of  might. 
And  thick  she  rains  the  gentle  shafts  that  slay; 

She  tosses  loose  her  locks  upon  the  night. 

And  through  the  dim  wood  Dian  thrids  her  way. 

Envoi 

Prince,  let  us  leave  the  din,  the  dust,  the  spite. 

The  gloom  and  glare  of  towns,  the  plague,  the  blight; 

Amid  the  forest  leaves  and  fountain  spray 
There  is  the  mystic  home  of  our  delight. 

And  through  the  dim  wood  Dian  thrids  her  way. 

Translation  of  Andrew  Lang 


THEODORE    DE   BANVILLE  1479 


AUX   ENFANTS   PERDUS 

I   KNOW  Cythera  long  is  desolate ; 
I  know  the  winds  have  stripped  the  garden  green. 
Alas,  my  friends!  beneath  the  fierce  sun's  weight 

A  barren  reef  lies  where  Love's  flowers  have  been, 

Nor  ever  lover  on  that  coast  is  seen! 
So  be  it,  for  we  seek  a  fabled  shore. 
To  lull  our  vague  desires  with  mystic  lore, 

To  wander  where  Love's  labyrinths  beguile; 
There  let  us  land,  there  dream  for  evermore, 

«It  may  be  we  shall  touch  the  happy  isle.'^ 

The  sea  may  be  our  sepulchre.     If  Fate, 

If  tempests  wreak  their  wrath  on  us,  serene 
We  watch  the  bolt  of  Heaven,  and  scorn  the  hate 

Of  angry  gods  that  smite  us  in  their  spleen. 

Perchance  the  jealous  mists  are  but  the  screen 
That  veils  the  fairy  coast  we  would  explore. 
Come,  though  the  sea  be  vexed,  and  breakers  roar, 

Come,  for  the  breath  of  this  old  world  is  vile. 
Haste  we,  and  toil,  and  faint  not  at  the  oar; 

<<It  may  be  we  shall  touch  the  happy  isle.'^ 

Gray  serpents  trail  in  temples  desecrate 

Where  Cypris  smiled,  the  golden  maid,  the  queen, 

And  ruined  is  the  palace  of  our  state; 

But  happy  loves  flit  round  the  mast,   and  keen 
The  shrill  winds  sings  the  silken  cords  between. 

Heroes  are  we,  with  wearied  hearts  and  sore, 

Whose  flower  is  faded  and  whose  locks  are  hoar. 
Haste,  ye  light  skiffs,  where  myrtle  thickets  smile 

Love's  panthers  sleep  'mid  roses,  as  of  yore: 
*<It  may  be  we  shall  touch  the  happy  isle.^^ 

Envoi 

Sad  eyes!  the  blue  sea  laughs  as  heretofore. 
Ah,  singing  birds,  your  happy  music  pour; 

Ah,  poets,  leave  the  sordid  earth  awhile; 
Flit  to  these  ancient  gods  we  still  adore : 

<<It  may  be  we  shall  touch  the  happy  isle.^^ 

Translation  of  Andrew  Lang, 


1480  THEODORE   DE   BANVILLE 


BALLADE   DES   PENDUS 

WHKKK  wide  the  forest  bows  are  spread, 
Where  Flora  wakes  with  sylph  and  fay, 
Are  crowns  and  garlands  of  men  dead, 
All  golden  in  the  morning  gay; 
"Within  this  ancient  garden  gray 

Are  clusters  such  as  no  man  knows. 
Where  Moor  and  Soldan  bear  the  sway: 
This  is  King  Louis's  orchard  close! 

These  wretched  folk  wave  overhead, 

With  such  strange  thoughts  as  none  may  say; 
A  moment  still,  then  sudden  sped. 

They  swing  in  a  ring  and  waste  away. 
The  morning  smites  them  with  her  ray; 

They  toss  with  every  breeze  that  blows. 
They  dance  where  fires  of  dawning  play: 

This  is  King  Louis's  orchard  close! 

All  hanged  and  dead,  they've  summoned 

(With  Hell  to  aid,  that  hears  them  pray) 
New  legions  of  an  army  dread. 

Now  down  the  blue  sky  flames  the  day; 
The  dew  dies  off;  the  foul  array 

Of  obscene  ravens  gathers  and  goes. 
With  wings  that  flap  and  beaks  that  flay: 

This  is  King  Louis's  orchard  close! 

Envoi 

Prince,  where  leaves  murmur  of  the  May, 

A  tree  of  bitter  clusters  grows; 
The  bodies  of  men  dead  are  they! 

This  is  King  Louis's  orchard  close! 

Translation  of  Andrew  Lang 


I48I 


ANNA  L/ETITIA  BARBAULD 

(1743-1825) 

HEN  Laetitia  Aikin  Barbauld  was  about  thirty  years  old,  her 
friend,  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Montague,  wishing  to  establish  a  col- 
lege for  women,  asked  her  to  be  its  principal.  In  her  letter 
of  refusal  Mrs.  Barbauld  said: —  «A  kind  of  Literary  Academy  for 
ladies  (for  that  is  what  you  seem  to  propose),  where  they  are  to  be 
taught  in  a  regular  systematic  manner  the  various  branches  of  science, 
appears  to  me  better  calculated  to  form  such  characters  as  the  Precieuses 
or  the  Fcmmes  savantes  of  IMoliere,  than  good  wives  or  agreeable  com- 
panions. .  .  .  But  young  ladies,  who  ought  only  to  have  such  a  general 
tincture  of  knowledge  as  to  make  them  agreeable  companions  to  a 
man  of  sense,  and  to  enable  them  to  find  rational  entertainment  for  a 
solitary  hour,  should  gain  these  accomplishments  in  a  more  quiet 
and  unobserved  manner.  .  .  .  The  best  way  for  women  to  acquire 
knowledge  is  from  conversation  with  a  father,  a  brother  or  friend, 
in  the  way  of  family  intercourse  and  easy  conversation,  and  by 
such  a  course  of  reading  as  they  may  recommend.))  It  is  odd  to 
find  Mrs.  Barbauld  thus  reflecting  the  old-fashioned  view  of  the 
capacity  and  requirements  of  her  own  sex,  for  she  herself  belonged 
to  that  brilliant  group — Hannah  More,  Fanny  Burney,  Maria  Edge- 
worth,  Jane  Austen,  Joanna  Baillie,  Mary  Russell  Mitford  —  who 
were  the  living  refutation  of  her  inherited  theories.  Their  influ- 
ence shows  a  pedagogic  impulse  to  present  morally  helpful  ideas  to 
the  public.  From  preceding  generations  whose  lives  had  been  con- 
centrated upon  household  affairs,  these  women  pioneers  had  acquired 
the  strictly  practical  bent  of  mind  which  comes  out  in  all  their  verse,  as 
in  all  their  prose. 

The  child  born  at  Kibworth  Harcourt,  Leicestershire,  a  century 
and  a  half  ago,  became  one  of  the  first  of  these  pleasant  writers  for 
young  and  old.  She  was  one  of  the  thousand  refutations  of  the 
stupid  popular  idea  that  precocious  children  never  amount  to  any- 
thing. When  only  two,  she  <' could  read  roundly  without  spelling, 
and  in  half  a  year  more  could  read  as  well  as  most  women."  Her 
father  was  master  of  a  boys'  school,  where  her  childhood  was  passed 
under  the  rule  of  a  loving  but  austere  mother,  who  disliked  all 
intercourse  with  the  pupils  for  her  daughter.  It  was  not  the  fash 
ion  for  women  to  be  highly  educated;  but,  stimulated  perhaps  by  the 
scholastic    atmosphere,    Laetitia    implored    her    father    for    a    classical 


I^^S2  ANNA   L^TITIA   BARBAULD 

training,  until,  against  his  judgment,  he  allowed  her  to  study  Greek 
and  Latin  as  well  as  French  and  Italian.  Though  not  fond  of  the 
housewifely  accomplishments  insisted  upon  by  Mrs.  Aikin,  the  eager 
student  also  cooked  and  sewed  with  due  obedience. 

Her  dull  childhood  ended  when  she  was  fifteen,  for  then  her 
father  accepted  a  position  as  classical  tutor  in  a  boys'  school  at 
Warrington,  Lancashire,  to  which  place  the  family  moved.  The  new 
home  afforded  greater  freedom  and  an  interesting  circle  of  friends, 
among  them  Currie,  William  Roscoe,  John  Taylor,  and  the  famous 
Dr.  Priestley.  A  very  pretty  girl,  with  brilliant  blonde  coloring  and 
animated  dark-blue  eyes,  she  was  witty  and  vivacious,  too,  under 
the  modest  diffidence  to  which  she  had  been  trained.  Naturally  she 
attracted  much  admiration  from  the  schoolboys  and  even  from  their 
elders,  but  on  the  whole  she  seems  to  have  found  study  and  writing 
more  interesting  than  love  affairs.  The  first  suitor,  who  presented 
himself  when  she  was  about  sixteen,  was  a  farmer  from  her  early 
home  at  Kibworth.  He  stated  his  wishes  to  her  father.  <<She  is  in 
the  garden, »  said  Mr.  Aikin.  «You  may  ask  her  yourself. »  Lastitia 
was  not  propitious,  but  the  young  man  was  persistent,  and  the  posi- 
tion grew  irksome.  So  the  nimble  girl  scrambled  into  a  convenient 
tree,  and  escaped  her  rustic  wooer  by  swinging  herself  down  upon 
the  other  side  of  the  garden  wall. 

During  these  years  at  Warrington  she  wrote  for  her  own  pleas- 
ure, and  when  her  brother  John  returned  home  after  several  years' 
absence,  he  helped  her  to  arrange  and  publish  a  selection  of  her 
poems.  The  little  book  which  appeared  in  1773  was  highly  praised, 
and  ran  through  four  editions  within  a  year.  In  spite  of  grace  and 
fluency,  most  of  these  verses  seem  flat  and  antiquated  to  the  modern 
reader.  Of  the  spirited  first  poem  <  Corsica,^  Dr.  Priestley  wrote  to 
her:  —  <<I  consider  that  you  are  as  much  a  general  as  Tyrtasus  was, 
and  your  poems  (which  I  am  confident  are  much  better  than  his  ever 
were)  may  have  as  great  effect  as  his.  They  may  be  the  coup  de  grace 
to  the  French  troops  in  that  island,  and  Paoli,  who  reads  English, 
will  cause  it  to  be  printed  in  every  history  in  that  renowned  island.** 

Miss  Aikin's  next  venture  was  a  small  volume  in  collaboration 
with  her  brother,  <  Miscellaneous  Pieces  in  Prose  by  J.  and  A.  L. 
Aikin.*  This  too  was  widely  read  and  admired.  Samuel  Rogers  has 
related  an  amusing  conversation  about  the  book  in  its  first  vogue:  — 
"I  am  greatly  pleased  with  your  ^Miscellaneous  Pieces,***  said  Charles 
James  Fox  to  Mrs.  Barbauld's  brother.  Dr.  Aikin  bowed.  "I  par- 
ticularly admire,**  continued  Fox,  <<  your  essay  ^Against  Inconsistency 
in  our  Expectations.***  "That,**  replied  Aikin,  "is  my  sister's.**  "I 
like  much,**  continued  Fox,  "your  essay  on  ^Monastic  Institutions.*** 
"That,**  answered  Aikin,   "is  also  my  sister's.**      Fox  thought  it  wise 


ANNA   L^TITIA   BARBAULD 


1483 


to  say  no  more  about  the  book.  The  essay  <  Against  Inconsistency 
in  our  Expectations  >  was  most  highly  praised  by  the  critics,  and  pro- 
nounced by  Mackintosh  <<  the  best  short  essay  in  the  language.'^ 

When  thirty  years  old,  Laetitia  Aikin  married  Rochemont  Bar- 
bauld,  and  went  to  live  at  Palgrave  in  Suffolk,  where  her  husband 
opened  a  boys'  school,  soon  made  popular  by  her  personal  charm  and 
influence.  Sir  William  Gell,  a  classic  topographer  still  remembered; 
William  Taylor,  author  of  a  ^Historic  Survey  of  German  Poetry^; 
and  Lord  Chief  Justice  Denman,  were  a  few  among  the  many  who 
looked  back  with  gratitude  to  a  childhood  under  her  care. 

Perhaps  her  best  known  work  is  the  <  Early  Lessons  for  Children,  > 
which  was  written  during  this  period.  Coming  as  it  did  when,  as 
Hannah  More  said,  there  was  nothing  for  children  to  read  between 
<  Cinderella  ^  and  the  Spectator,  it  was  largely  welcomed,  and  has 
been  used  by  generations  of  English  children.  The  lessons  were 
written  for  a  real  little  Charles,  her  adopted  son,  the  child  of  her 
brother.  Dr.  Aikin.  For  him,  too,  she  wrote  her  <  Hymns  in  Prose 
for  Children,*  a  book  equally  successful,  which  has  been  translated 
into  French,  German,  Spanish,  Italian,  and  even  Latin. 

After  eleven  busy  years  at  Palgrave,  during  which,  in  spite  of  her 
cheerful  energy,  Mrs.  Barbauld  had  been  much  harassed  by  the  nerv- 
ous irritability  of  her  invalid  husband,  the  Barbaulds  gave  up  their 
school  and  treated  themselves  to  a  year  of  Continental  travel.  On 
their  return  they  settled  at  Hampstead,  where  Mr.  Barbauld  became 
pastor  of  a  small  Unitarian  congregation.  The  nearness  to  London 
was  a  great  advantage  to  Mrs.  Barbauld's  refreshed  activity,  and  she 
soon  made  the  new  home  a  pleasant  rendezvous  for  literary  men  and 
women.  At  one  of  her  London  dinner  parties  she  met  Sir  Walter 
Scott,  who  declared  that  her  reading  of  Taylor's  translation  of  Biir- 
ger's  *■  Lenore  *  had  inspired  him  to  write  poetry.  She  met  Dr.  John- 
son too,  who,  though  he  railed  at  her  after  his  fashion,  calling  her 
Deborah  and  Virago  Barbauld,  did  sometimes  betray  a  sincere  admi- 
ration for  her  character  and  accomplishments.  Miss  Edgeworth  and 
Hannah  More  were  dear  friends  and  regular  correspondents. 

From  time  to  time  she  published  a  poem  or  an  essay;  not  many, 
for  in  spite  of  her  brother's  continual  admonition  to  write,  hers  was 
a  somewhat  indolent  talent.  In  1790  she  wrote  a  capable  essay  upon 
the  repeal  of  the  Test  and  Corporation  Acts;  a  year  later,  a  poetical 
epistle  to  Mr.  AVilberforce  on  the  Slave  Trade;  in  1792,  a  defense  of 
Public  Worship;  and  in  1793,  a  discourse  as  to  a  Fast  Day  upon  the 
Sins  of  Government. 

In  1808  her  husband's  violent  death,  the  result  of  a  long  insanity, 
prostrated  her  for  a  time.  Then  as  a  diversion  from  morbid  thought 
she  undertook  an  edition  of  the  best  English  novels  in  fifty  volumes. 


1484 


AKNA   L^TITIA   BARBAULD 


for  which  she  wrote  an  admirable  introductory  essay.  She  also 
made  a  compilation  from  the  Spectator,  Tatler,  Guardian,  and  Free- 
holder, with  a  preliminary  discourse,  which  she  published  in  181 1. 
It  was  called  <The  Female  Speaker,*  and  Intended  for  young  women. 
The  same  year  her  < Eighteen  Hundred  and  Eleven,*  a  patriotic  di- 
dactic poem,  wounded  national  self-love  and  drew  upon  her  much 
unfriendly  criticism,  which  so  pained  her  that  she  would  publish  no 
more.  But  the  stirring  lines  were  widely  read,  and  in  them  Macaulay 
found  the  original  of  his  famous  traveler  from  New  Zealand,  who 
meditates  on  the  ruined  arches  of  London  Bridge.  Her  prose  style, 
in  its  light  philosophy,  its  humorously  sympathetic  dealing  with 
every-day  affairs,  has  been  often  compared  with  Addison's. 

Her  old  age  was  serene  and  happy,  rich  in  intellectual  companion- 
ships and  in  the  love  and  respect  of  many  friends.  Somewhere  she 
speaks  of  "  that  state  of  middling  life  to  which  I  have  been  accus- 
tomed and  which  I  love.**  She  disliked  extremes,  in  emotion  as  in  all 
things,  and  took  what  came  with  cheerful  courage.  The  poem  'Life,* 
which  the  self-satisfied  Wordsworth  wished  that  he  had  written,  ex- 
presses her  serene  and  philosophic  spirit. 


AGAINST   INCONSISTENCY   IN   OUR   EXPECTATIONS 

AS  MOST  of  the  unhappiness  in  the  world  arises  rather  from 
disappointed  desires  than  from  positive  evil,  it  is  of  the 
utmost  consequence  to  attain  just  notions  of  the  laws  and 
order  of  the  universe,  that  we  may  not  vex  ourselves  with  fruit- 
less wishes,  or  give  way  to  groundless  and  unreasonable  discon- 
tent. The  laws  of  natural  philosophy,  indeed,  are  tolerably 
understood  and  attended  to;  and  though  we  may  suffer  incon- 
veniences, we  are  seldom  disappointed  in  consequence  of  them. 
No  man  expects  to  preserve  orange-tree^s  in  the  open  air  through 
an  English  winter;  or  when  he  has  planted  an  acorn,  to  see  it 
become  a  large  oak  in  a  few  months.  The  mind  of  man  naturally 
yields  to  necessity;  and  our  wishes  soon  subside  when  we  see  the 
impossibility  of  their  being  gratified. 

Now,  upon  an  accurate  inspection,  we  shall  find  in  the  moral 
government  of  the  world,  and  the  order  of  the  intellectual  system, 
laws  as  determinate,  fixed,  and  invariable  as  any  in  Newton's 
*Principia.*  The  progress  of  vegetation  is  not  more  certain  than 
the  growth  of  habit;  nor  is  the  power  of  attraction  more  clearly 
proved   than  the  force  of   affection  or  the  influence  of  example. 


ANNA   L^TITIA  BARBAULD 


1485 


The  man,  therefore,  who  has  well  studied  the  operations  of 
nature  in  mind  as  well  as  matter,  will  acquire  a  certain  modera- 
tion and  equity  in  his  claims  upon  Providence.  He  never  will 
be  disappointed  either  in  himself  or  others.  He  will  act  with 
precision;  and  expect  that  effect  and  that  alone,  from  his  efforts, 
which  they  are  naturally  adapted  to  produce. 

For  want  of  this,  men  of  merit  and  integrity  often  censure 
the  dispositions  of  Providence  for  suffering  characters  they  despise 
to  run  away  with  advantages  which,  they  yet  know,  are  pur- 
chased by  siich  means  as  a  high  and  noble  spirit  could  never 
submit  to.  If  you  refuse  to  pay  the  price,  why  expect  the  pur- 
chase ?  We  should  consider  this  world  as  a  great  mart  of  com- 
merce, where  fortune  exposes  to  our  view  various  commodities, — • 
riches,  ease,  tranquillity,  fame,  integrity,  knowledge.  Everything 
is  marked  at  a  settled  price.  Our  time,  our  labor,  our  ingenuity, 
is  so  miich  ready  money  which  we  are  to  lay  out  to  the  best 
advantage.  Examine,  compare,  choose,  reject;  but  stand  to  your 
own  judgment:  and  do  not,  like  children,  when  you  have  pur- 
chased one  thing,  repine  that  you  do  not  possess  another  which 
you  did  not  purchase.  Such  is  the  force  of  well-regulated 
industry,  that  a  steady  and  vigorous  exertion  of  our  faculties, 
directed  to  one  end,  will  generally  insure  success. 

Would  you,  for  instance,  be  rich:  Do  you  think  that  single 
point  worth  the  sacrificing  everything  else  to  ?  You  may  then 
be  rich.  Thousands  have  become  so  from  the  lowest  beginnings, 
by  toil,  and  patient  diligence,  and  attention  to  the  minutest 
article  of  expense  and  profit.  But  you  must  give  up  the  pleas- 
ures of  leisure,  of  a  vacant  mind,  of  a  free,  unsuspicious  temper. 
If  you  preserve  your  integrity,  it  must  be  a  coarse-spun  and 
vulgar  honesty.  Those  high  and  lofty  notions  of  morals  which 
you  brought  with  you  from  the  schools  must  be  considerably 
lowered,  and  mixed  with  the  baser  alloy  of  a  jealous  and 
worldly-minded  prudence.  You  must  learn  to  do  hard  if  not 
unjust  things;  and  for  the  nice  embarrassments  of  a  delicate  and 
ingenuous  spirit,  it  is  necessary  for  you  to  get  rid  of  them  as 
fast  as  possible.  You  must  shut  your  heart  against  the  Muses, 
and  be  content  to  feed  your  understanding  with  plain,  household 
truths.  In  short,  you  must  not  attempt  to  enlarge  your  ideas, 
or  polish  your  taste,  or  refine  your  sentiments;  but  must  keep 
on  in  one  beaten  track,  without  turning  aside  either  to  the  right 
hand  or  to  the  left.     "  But  I  cannot  submit  to  drudgery  like  this : 


i486 


ANNA   L^TITIA   BARBAULD 


I  feel  a  spirit  above  it.'*  'Tis  well:  be  above  it  then;  only  do 
not  repine  that  you  are  not  rich. 

Is  knowledge  the  pearl  of  price  ?  That  too  may  be  purchased 
—  by  steady  application,  and  long  solitary  hours  of  study  and 
reflection.  Bestow  these,  and  you  shall  be  wise.  "  But "  (says 
the  man  of  letters)  ^^what  a  hardship  is  it  that  many  an  illiter- 
ate fellow  who  cannot  construe  the  motto  of  the  arms  on  his 
coach,  shall  raise  a  fortune  and  make  a  figure,  while  I  have 
little  more  than  the  common  conveniences  of  life.**  Et  tibi  iiia<nii 
satis  J  —  Was  it  in  order  to  raise  a  fortune  that  you  consumed 
the  sprightly  hours  of  youth  in  study  and  retirement  ?  Was  it 
to  be  rich  that  you  grew  pale  over  the  midnight  lamp,  and  dis- 
tilled the  sweetness  from  the  Greek  and  Roman  spring  ?  You 
have  then  mistaken  your  path,  and  ill  employed  your  industry. 
**  What  reward  have  I  then  for  all  my  labors  ?  **  What  reward ! 
A  large,  comprehensive  soul,  well  purged  from  vulgar  fears  and 
perturbations  and  prejudices;  able  to  comprehend  and  interpret 
the  works  of  man  —  of  God.  A  rich,  flourishing,  cultivated 
mind,  pregnant  with  inexhaustible  stores  of  entertainment  and 
reflection.  A  perpetual  spring  of  fresh  ideas;  and  the  conscious 
dignity  of  superior  intelligence.  Good  heaven !  and  what  reward 
can  you  ask  besides  ? 

"  But  is  it  not  some  reproach  upon  the  economy  of  Provi- 
dence that  such  a  one,  who  is  a  mean,  dirty  fellow,  should  have 
amassed  wealth  enough  to  buy  half  a  nation  ?  **  Not  in  the  least. 
He  made  himself  a  mean,  dirty  fellow  for  that  very  end.  He  has 
paid  his  health,  his  conscience,  his  liberty,  for  it;  and  will  you 
envy  him  his  bargain  ?  Will  you  hang  your  head  and  blush  in  his 
presence  because  he  outshines  you  in  equipage  and  show  ?  Lift 
up  your  brow  with  a  noble  confidence,  and  say  to  yourself,  I  have 
not  these  things,  it  is  true;  but  it  is  because  I  have  not  sought, 
because  I  have  not  desired  them;  it  is  because  I  possess  some- 
thing better.     I  have  chosen  my  lot.     I  am  content  and  satisfied. 

You  are  a  modest  man  —  you  love  quiet  and  independence, 
and  have  a  delicacy  and  reserve  in  your  temper  which  renders 
it  impossible  for  you  to  elbow  your  way  in  the  world,  and  be 
the  herald  of  your  own  merits.  Be  content  then  with  a  modest 
retirement,  with  the  esteem  of  your  intimate  friends,  with  the 
praises  of  a  blameless  heart,  and  a  delicate,  ingenuous  spirit;  but 
resign  the  splendid  distinctions  of  the  world  to  those  who  can 
better  scramble  for  them. 


ANNA  L^TITIA  BARBAULD 


1487 


The  man  whose  tender  sensibihty  of  conscience  and  strict 
regard  to  the  rules  of  morality  makes  him  scrupulous  and  fear- 
ful of  offending,  is  often  heard  to  complain  of  the  disadvantages 
he  lies  under  in  every  path  of  honor  and  profit.  "  Could  I  but 
get  over  some  nice  points,  and  conform  to  the  practice  and  opin- 
ion of  those  about  me,  I  might  stand  as  fair  a  chance  as  others 
for  dignities  and  preferment. "  And  why  can  you  not  ?  What 
hinders  you  from  discarding  this  troublesome  scrupulosity  of 
yours  which  stands  so  grievously  in  your  way  ?  If  it  be  a  small* 
thing  to  enjoy  a  healthful  mind,  sound  at  the  very  core,  that 
does  not  shrink  from  the  keenest  inspection;  inward  freedom 
from  remorse  and  perturbation;  unsullied  whiteness  and  sim- 
plicity of  manners;  a  genuine  integrity, 

^<  Pure  in  the  last  recesses  of  the  mind ;  ** 

if  you  think  these  advantages  an  inadequate  recompense  for 
what  you  resign,  dismiss  your  scruples  this  instant,  and  be  a 
slave -merchant,   a  parasite,   or  —  what   you   please. 

<^  If  these  be  motives  weak,  break  off  betimes;'^ 

and  as  you  have  not  spirit  to  assert  the  dignity  of  virtue,  be 
wise    enough    not   to   forego    the    emoluments    of   vice. 

I  much  admire  the  spirit  of  the  ancient  philosophers,  in  that 
they  never  attempted,  as  our  moralists  often  do,  to  lower  the 
tone  of  philosophy,  and  make  it  consistent  with  all  the  indul- 
gences of  indolence  and  sensuality.  They  never  thought  of  hav- 
ing the  bulk  of  mankind  for  their  disciples;  but  kept  themselves 
as  distinct  as  possible  from  a  worldly  life.  They  plainly  told 
men  what  sacrifices  were  required,  and  what  advantages  they 
were  which  might  be  expected, 

<<  Si  virtus  hoc  una  potest  dare,  fortis  omissis 
Hoc  age  deliciis     .     .     .>> 

If  you  would  be  a  philosopher,  these  are  the  terms.  You  must 
do  thus  and  thus;  there  is  no  other  way.  If  not,  go  and  be  one 
of  the  vulgar. 

There  is  no  one  quality  gives  so  much  dignity  to  a  character 
as  consistency  of  conduct.  Even  if  a  man's  pursuits  be  wrong 
and  unjustifiable,  yet  if  they  are  prosecuted  with  steadiness  and 
vigor,  we  cannot  withhold  our  admiration.  The  most  character- 
istic  mark   of   a   great    mind    is    to    choose    some    one    important 


1488 


ANNA   L^TITIA   BARBAULD 


object,  and  pursue  it  through  life.  It  was  this  made  Caesar  a 
great  man.  His  object  was  ambition:  he  pursued  it  steadily; 
and  was  always  ready  to  sacrifice  to  it  every  interfering  passion 
or  inclination. 

There  is  a  pretty  passage  in  one  of  Lucian's  dialogues,  where 
Jupiter  complains  to  Cupid  that  though  he  has  had  so  many 
intrigues,  he  was  never  sincerely  beloved.  In  order  to  be  loved, 
says  Cupid,  you  must  lay  aside  your  a;gis  and  your  thunder- 
bolts, and  you  must  curl  and  perfume  your  hair,  and  place  a 
garland  on  your  head,  and  walk  with  a  soft  step,  and  assume  a 
winning,  obsequious  deportment.  But,  replied  Jupiter,  I  am  not 
willing  to  resign  so  much  of  my  dignity.  Then,  returns  Cupid, 
leave  off  desiring  to  be  loved.  He  wanted  to  be  Jupiter  and 
Adonis  at  the  same  time. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  men  of  genius  are  of  all  others 
most  inclined  to  make  these  unreasonable  claims.  As  their  relish 
for  enjoyment  is  strong,  their  views  large  and  comprehensive, 
and  they  feel  themselves  lifted  above  the  common  bulk  of  man- 
kind, they  are  apt  to  slight  that  natural  reward  of  praise  and 
admiration  which  is  ever  largely  paid  to  distinguished  abilities; 
and  to  expect  to  be  called  forth  to  public  notice  and  favor: 
without  considering  that  their  talents  are  commonly  very  unfit 
for  active  life;  that  their  eccentricity  and  turn  for  speculation 
disqualifies  them  for  the  business  of  the  world,  which  is  best 
carried  on  by  men  of  moderate  genius;  and  that  society  is  not 
obliged  to  reward  any  one  who  is  not  useful  to  it.  The  poets 
have  been  a  very  unreasonable  race,  and  have  often  complained 
loudly  of  the  neglect  of  genius  and  the  ingratitude  of  the  age. 
The  tender  and  pensive  Cowley,  and  the  elegant  Shenstone,  had 
their  minds  tinctured  by  this  discontent;  and  even  the  siiblime 
melancholy  of  Young  was  too  much  owing  to  the  stings  of  dis- 
appointed ambition. 

The  moderation  we  have  been  endeavoring  to  inculcate  will 
likewise  prevent  much  mortification  and  disgust  in  our  commerce 
with  mankind.  As  we  ought  not  to  wish  in  ourselves,  so  neither 
should  we  expect  in  our  friends,  contrary  qualifications.  Young 
and  sanguine,  when  we  enter  the  world,  and  feel  our  affections 
drawn  forth  by  any  particular  excellence  in  a  character,  we  imme- 
diately give  it  credit  for  all  others;  and  are  beyond  measure  dis- 
gusted when  we  come  to  discover,  as  we  soon  must  discover,  the 
defects   in   the   other   side   of   the   balance.     But   nature    is   much 


AISTNA   L^TITIA   BARBAULD 


1489 


more  frugal  than  to  heap  together  all  manner  of  shining  qualities 
in  one  glaring  mass.  Like  a  judicious  painter,  she  endeavors  to 
preserve  a  certain  unity  of  style  and  coloring  in  her  pieces. 
Models  of  absolute  perfection  are  only  to  be  met  with  in  romance; 
where  exquisite  beauty,  and  brilliant  wit,  and  profound  judgment, 
and  immaculate  virtue,  are  all  blended  together  to  adorn  some 
favorite  character.  As  an  anatomist  knows  that  the  racer  cannot 
have  the  strength  and  muscles  of  the  draught-horse;  and  that 
winged  men,  griffins,  and  mermaids  must  be  mere  creatures  of 
the  imagination:  so  the  philosopher  is  sensible  that  there  are 
combinations  of  moral  qualities  which  never  can  take  place  but  in 
idea.  There  is  a  different  air  and  complexion  in  characters  as 
well  as  in  faces,  though  perhaps  each  equally  beautiful;  and  the 
excellences  of  one  cannot  be  transferred  to  the  other.  Thus  if 
one  man  possesses  a  stoical  apathy  of  soul,  acts  independent  of 
the  opinion  of  the  world,  and  fulfills  every  duty  with  mathemat- 
ical exaetness,  you  must  not  expect  that  man  to  be  greatly  influ- 
enced by  the  weakness  of  pity,  or  the  partialities  of  friendship; 
you  must  not  be  offended  that  he  does  not  fly  to  meet  you  after 
a  short  absence,  or  require  from  him  the  convivial  spirit  and 
honest  effiisions  of  a  warm,  open,  susceptible  heart.  If  another 
is  remarkable  for  a  lively,  active  zeal,  inflexible  integrity,  a  strong 
indignation  against  vice,  and  freedom  in  reproving  it,  he  will 
probably  have  some  little  bluntness  in  his  address  not  altogether 
suitable  to  polished  life;  he  will  want  the  winning  arts  of  conver- 
sation; he  will  disgust  by  a  kind  of  haughtiness  and  negligence 
in  his  manner,  and  often  hurt  the  delicacy  of  his  acquaintance 
with  harsh  and  disagreeable  truths. 

We  usually  say —  That  man  is  a  genius,  but  he  has  some 
whims  and  oddities —  Such  a  one  has  a  very  general  knowledge, 
but  he  is  superficial,  etc.  Now  in  all  such  cases  we  should  speak 
more  rationally,  did  we  substitute  "  therefore  ^^  for  "  but  *' :  <^  He 
is  a  genius,   therefore  he  is  whimsical ;  **  and  the  like. 

It  is  the  fault  of  the  present  age,  owing  to  the  freer  com- 
merce that  different  ranks  and  professions  now  enjoy  with  each 
other,  that  characters  are  not  marked  with  sufficient  strength; 
the  several  classes  nm  too  much  into  one  another.  We  have 
fewer  pedants,  it  is  true,  but  we  have  fewer  striking  originals. 
Every  one  is  expected  to  have  such  a  tincture  of  general  knowl- 
edge as  is  incompatible  with  going  deep  into  any  science;  and 
such    a    conformity   to   fashionable    manners   as    checks   the    free 

III— 94 


I490  ANNA   L/ETITIA   BARBAULD 

workings  of  the  ruling-  passion,  and  gives  an  insipid  sametiess  to 
the  face  of  society,  under  the  idea  of  pohsh  and  regularity. 

There  is  a  cast  of  manners  peculiar  and  becoming  to  each 
age,  sex,  and  profession;  one,  therefore,  should  not  throw  out 
illiberal  and  commonplace  censures  against  another.  Each  is 
perfect  in  its  kind:  a  woman  as  a  woman;  a  tradesman  as  a 
tradesman.  We  are  often  hurt  by  the  brutality  and  sluggish  con- 
ceptions of  the  vulgar;  not  considering  that  some  there  must  be 
to  be  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water,  and  that  cultivated 
genius,  or  even  any  great  refinement  and  delicacy  in  their  moral 
feelings,  would  be  a  real  misfortune  to  them. 

Let  us  then  study  the  philosophy  of  the  human  mind.  The 
man  who  is  master  of  this  science  will  know  what  to  expect 
from  every  one.  From  this  man,  wise  advice;  from  that,  cordial 
sympathy;  from  another,  casual  entertainment.  The  passions  and 
inclinations  of  others  are  his  tools,  which  he  can  use  with  as 
much  precision  as  he  would  the  mechanical  powers;  and- he  can 
as  readily  make  allowance  for  the  workings  of  vanity,  or  the  bias 
of  self-interest  in  his  friends,  as  for  the  power  of  friction,  or  the 
irregularities  of  the  needle. 


A  DIALOGUE   OF   THE   DEAD 
BETWEEN    HELEN    AND    MADAME    MAINTENON 

HELEN  —  Whence  comes  it,  my  dear  Madame  Maintenon,  that 
beauty,  which  in  the  age  I  lived  in  produced  such  extraor- 
dinary effects,  has  now  lost  almost  all  its  power  ? 

Maintenon — I  should  wish  first  to  be  convinced  of  the  fact, 
before  I  offer  to  give  you  a  reason  for  it. 

Helen  —  That  will  be  very  easy;  for  there  is  no  occasion  to 
go  any  further  than  our  own  histories  and  experience  to  prove 
what  I  advance.  You  were  beautiful,  accomplished,  and  fortu- 
nate; endowed  with  every  talent  and  every  grace  to  bend  the 
heart  of  man  and  mold  it  to  your  wish;  and  your  schemes  were 
successful;  for  you  raised  yourself  from  obscurity  and  dependence 
to  be  the  wife  of  a  great  monarch. —  But  what  is  this  to  the 
influence  my  beauty  had  over  sovereigns  and  nations!  I  occas- 
ioned a  long  ten-years'  war  between  the  most  celebrated  heroes 
of  antiquity;  contending  kingdoms  disputed  the  honor  of  placing 
me    on    their    respective    thrones;    my    story    is    recorded    by    the 


ANNA  L^TITIA  BARBAULD  I4gi 

father  of  verse;  and  my  charms  make  a  figure  even  in  the  an- 
nals of  mankind.  You  were,  it  is  true,  the  wife  of  Louis  XIV., 
and  respected  in  his  court,  but  you  occasioned  no  wars;  you  are 
not  spoken  of  in  the  history  of  France,  though  you  furnished 
materials  for  the  memoirs  of  a  court.  Are  the  love  and  admi- 
ration that  were  paid  you  merely  as  an  amiable  woman  to  be 
compared  with  the  enthusiasm  I  inspired,  and  the  boundless 
empire  I  obtained  over  all  that  was  celebrated,  great,  or  power- 
ful in  the  age  I  lived  in  ? 

Maintcnon  —  All  this,  my  dear  Helen,  has  a  splendid  appear- 
ance, and  sounds  well  in  a  heroic  poem;  but  you  greatly  deceive 
yourself  if  you  impute  it  all  to  your  personal  merit.  Do  you 
imagine  that  half  the  chiefs  concerned  in  the  war  of  Troy  were 
at  all  influenced  by  your  beauty,  or  troubled  their  heads  what 
became  of  you,  provided  they  came  off  with  honor  ?  Believe 
me,  love  had  very  little  to  do  in  the  affair:  Menelaus  sought  to 
revenge  the  affront  he  had  received;  Agamemnon  was  flattered 
with  the  supreme  command;  some  came  to  share  the  glory, 
others  the  plunder;  some  because  they  had  bad  wives  at  home, 
some  in  hopes  of  getting  Trojan  mistresses  abroad;  and  Homer 
thought  the  story  extremely  proper  for  the  subject  of  the  best 
poem  in  the  world.  Thus  you  became  famous;  your  elopement 
was  made  a  national  quarrel;  the  animosities  of  both  nations 
were  kindled  by  frequent  battles;  and  the  object  was  not  the 
restoring  of  Helen  to  Menelaus,  but  the  destruction  of  Troy  by 
the  Greeks. —  My  triumphs,  on  the  other  hand,  were  all  owing 
to  myself,  and  to  the  influence  of  personal  merit  and  charms  over 
the  heart  of  man.  My  birth  was  obscure;  my  fortunes  low;  I 
had  past  the  bloom  of  youth,  and  was  advancing  to  that  period 
at  which  the  generality  of  our  sex  lose  all  importance  with  the 
other;  I  had  to  do  with  a  man  of  gallantry  and  intrigue,  a 
monarch  who  had  been  long  familiarized  with  beauty,  and  accus- 
tomed to  every  refinement  of  pleasure  which  the  most  splendid 
court  in  Europe  could  afford:  Love  and  Beauty  seemed  to  have 
exhausted  all  their  powers  of  pleasing  for  him  in  vain.  Yet  this 
man  I  captivated,  I  fixed;  and  far  from  being  content,  as  other 
beauties  had  been,  with  the  honor  of  possessing  his  heart,  I 
brought  him  to  make  me  his  wife,  and  gained  an  honorable  title 
to  his  tenderest  affection. —  The  infatuation  of  Paris  reflected  little 
honor  upon  you.  A  thoughtless  youth,  gay,  tender,  and  impress- 
ible, struck  with  your  beauty,  in  violation  of  all  the  most  sacred 


1492 


ANNA  L^TITIA    BARBAU1.D 


laws  of  hospitality  carries  you  off,  and  obstinately  refuses  to 
restore  yon  to  your  hnsband.  You  seduced  Paris  from  his  duty, 
I  recovered  Louis  from  vice;  you  were  the  mistress  of  the  Tro- 
jan prince,   I  was  the  companion  of  the  French  monarch. 

Helen — I  grant  you  were  the  wife  of  Louis,  but  not  the 
Queen  of  France.  Your  g-reat  object  was  ambition,  and  in  that 
you  met  with  a  partial  success;  —  my  ruling-  star  was  love,  and  I 
g-ave  up  everything  for  it.  But  tell  me,  did  not  I  show  my  influ- 
ence over  Menelaus  in  his  taking-  me  again  after  the  destruction 
of  Troy? 

Maintetion  —  That  circumstance  alone  is  sufficient  to  show  that 
he  did  not  love  you  with  any  delicacy.  He  took  you  as  a  posses- 
sion that  was  restored  to  him,  as  a  booty  that  he  had  recovered; 
and  he  had  not  sentiment  enough  to  care  whether  he  had  your 
heart  or  not.  The  heroes  of  your  age  were  capable  of  admiring 
beauty,  and  often  fought  for  the  possession  of  it;  but  they  had 
not  refinement  enough  to  be  capable  of  any  pure,  sentimental 
attachment  or  delicate  passion.  Was  that  period  the  triumph  of 
love  and  gallantry,  when  a  fine  woman  and  a  tripod  were  placed 
together  for  prizes  at  a  wrestling-bout,  and  the  tripod  esteemed 
the  most  valuable  reward  of  the  two?  No;  it  is  our  Clelia,  our 
Cassandra  and  Princess  of  Cleves,  that  have  polished  mankind 
and  taught  them  how  to  love. 

Helen  —  Rather  say  you  have  lost  sight  of  nature  and  pas- 
sion, between  bombast  on  one  hand  and  conceit  on  the  other. 
Shall  one  of  the  cold  temperament  of  France  teach  a  Grecian 
how  to  love  ?  Greece,  the  parent  of  fair  forms  and  soft  desires, 
the  nurse  of  poetry,  whose  soft  climate  and  tempered  skies  dis- 
posed to  every  gentler  feeling,  and  tuned  the  heart  to  harmony 
and  love! — was  Greece  a  land  of  barbarians?  But  recollect,  if 
you  can,  an  incident  which  showed  the  power  of  beauty  in 
stronger  colors  —  that  when  the  grave  old  counselors  of  Priam 
on  my  appearance  were  struck  with  fond  admiration,  and  could 
not  bring  themselves  to  blame  the  caiise  of  a  war  that  had 
almost  ruined  their  country;  —  you  see  I  charmed  the  old  as 
well  as  seduced  the  young. 

Maintenoii  —  But  I,  after  I  was  grown  old,  charmed  the 
young;  I  was  idolized  in  a  capital  where  taste,  luxury,  and  mag- 
nificence were  at  the  height;  I  was  celebrated  by  the  greatest 
wits  of  my  time,  and  my  letters  have  been  carefully  handed 
down  to  posterity. 


ANNA   L^TITIA   BARBAULD  1403 

Helen  —  Tell  me  now  sincerely,  were  you  happy  in  your  ele- 
vated fortune  ? 

Maintenon  —  Alas!  Heaven  knows  I  was  far  otherwise:  a 
thousand  times  did  I  wish  for  my  dear  Scarron  again.  He  was 
a  very  ugly  fellow,  it  is  true,  and  had  but  little  money:  but  the 
most  easy,  entertaining  companion  in  the  world^:  we  danced, 
laughed,  and  sung;  I  spoke  without  fear  or  anxiety,  and  was 
sure  to  please.  With  Louis  all  was  gloom,  constraint,  and  a 
painful  solicitude  to  please  —  which  seldom  produces  its  effect; 
the  king's  temper  had  been  soured  in  the  latter  part  of  life  by 
frequent  disappointments;  and  I  was  forced  continually  to  en- 
deavor to  procure  him  that  cheerfulness  which  I  had  not  myself. 
Louis  was  accustomed  to  the  most  delicate  flatteries;  and  though 
I  had  a  good  share  of  wit,  my  faculties  were  continually  on  the 
stretch  to  entertain  him, —  a  state  of  mind  little  consistent  with 
happiness  or  ease;  I  was  afraid  to  advance  my  friends  or  punish 
my  enemies.  My  pupils  at  St.  Cyr  were  not  more  secluded  from 
the  world  in  a  cloister  than  I  was  in  the  bosom  of  the  court;  a 
secret  disgust  and  weariness  consumed  me.  I  had  no  relief  but 
in  my  work  and  books  of  devotion;  with  these  alone  I  had  a 
gleam  of  happiness. 

Helen  —  Alas!  one  need  not  have  married  a  great  monarch  for 
that. 

Maintenon — But  deign  to  inform  me,  Helen,  if  you  were 
really  as  beautiful  as  fame  reports  ?  for  to  say  truth,  I  cannot  in 
your  shade  see  the  beauty  which  for  nine  long  years  had  set  the 
world  in  arms. 

Helen  —  Honestly,  no:  I  was  rather  low,  and  something  sun- 
burnt ;  but  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  please ;  that  was  all.  I 
was  greatly  obliged  to  Homer. 

Maintenon  —  And  did  you  live  tolerably  with  Menelaus  after 
all  your  adventures  ? 

Helen  —  As  well  as  possible.  Menelaus  was  a  good-natured 
domestic  man,  and  was  glad  to  sit  down  and  end  his  days  in 
quiet.  I  persuaded  him  that  Venus  and  the  Fates  were  the  cause 
of  all  my  irregularities,  which  he  complaisantly  believed.  Besides, 
I  was  not  sorry  to  return  home:  for  to  tell  you  a  secret,  Paris  had 
been  unfaithful  to  ine  long  before  his  death,  and  was  fond  of  a 
little  Trojan  brunette  whose  office  it  was  to  hold  up  my  train; 
but  it  was  thought  dishonorable  to  give  me  up.  I  began  to  think 
love  a  very  foolish  thing:  I  became  a  great  housekeeper,  worked 


I^o^  ANNA  L^TITIA   BARBAULD 

the  battles  of  Troy  in  tapestry,  and  spun  with  my  maids  by  the 
side  of  Menelaiis,  who  was  so  satisfied  with  my  conduct,  and 
behaved,  good  man,  with  so  much  fondness,  that  I  verily  think 
this  was  the  happiest  period  of  my  life. 

Maintcnon  —  Nothing  more  likely ;  but  the  most  obscure  wife 
in  Greece  could  rival  you  there.  —  Adieu!  you  have  convinced  me 
how  little  fame  and  greatness  conduce  to  happiness. 


LIFE 

Life!  I  know  not  what  thou  art, 
But  know  that  thou  and  I  must  part; 
And  when  or  how  or  where  we  met, 
I  own  to  me's  a  secret  yet. 
But  this  I  know,  when  thou  art  fled. 
Where'er  they  lay  these  limbs,  this  head, 
No  clod  so  valueless  shall  be, 
As  all  that  then  remains  of  me. 
O  whither,  whither  dost  thou  fly. 
Where  bend  unseen  thy  trackless  course, 

And  in  this  strange  divorce, 
Ah,  tell  where  I  must  seek  this  compound  I  ? 
To  the  vast  ocean  of  empyreal  flame. 

From  whence  thy  essence  came. 
Dost  thou  thy  flight  pursue,  when  freed 
From  matter's  base  encumbering  weed  ? 
Or  dost  thou,  hid  from  sight. 
Wait,  like  some  spell-bound  knight, 
Through  blank  oblivion's  years  th'  appointed  hour, 
To  break  thy  trance  and  reassume  thy  power  ? 
Yet  canst  thou  without  thought  or  feeling  be  } 
O  say  what  art  thou,  when  no  more  thou'rt  thee  ? 
Life !  we've  been  long  together. 
Through  pleasant  and  through  cloudy  weather, 
*Tis  hard  to  part  when  friends  are  dear; 
Perhaps  'twill  cost  a  sigh,  a  tear; 
Then  steal  away,  give  little  warning. 
Choose  thine  own  time ; 
Say  not  good-night,  but  in  some  brighter  clime 
Bid  me  good-morning. 


ANNA  L^TITIA  BARBAULD  I495 


P 


PRAISE   TO   GOD 

RAISE  to  God,  immortal  praise, 

For  the  love  that  crowns  our  days  — 

Bounteous  source  of  every  joy. 

Let  Thy  praise  our  tongues  employ! 


For  the  blessings  of  the  field. 
For  the  stores  the  gardens  yield. 
For  the  vine's  exalted  juice. 
For  the  generous  olive's  use; 

Flocks  that  whiten  all  the  plain. 
Yellow  sheaves  of  ripened  grain. 
Clouds  that  drop  their  fattening  dews, 
Suns  that  temperate  warmth  diffuse  — 

All  that  Spring,  with  bounteous  hand. 
Scatters  o'er  the  smiling  land; 
All  that  liberal  Autumn  pours 
From  her  rich  o'erflowing  stores: 

These  to  Thee,  my  God,  we  owe  — 
Source  whence  all  our  blessings  flow! 
And  for  these  my  soul  shall  raise 
Grateful  vows  and  solemn  praise. 

Yet  should  rising  whirlwinds  tear 
From  its  stem  the  ripening  ear  — 
Should  the  fig-tree's  blasted  shoot 
Drop  her  green  untimely  fruit  — 

Should  the  vine  put  forth  no  more, 
Nor  the  olive  yield  her  store  — 
Though  the  sickening  flocks  should  fall 
And  the  herds  desert  the  stall  — 

Should  Thine  altered  hand  restrain 
The  early  and  the  latter  rain, 
Blast  each  opening  bud  of  joy, 
And  the  rising  year  destroy: 

Yet  to  Thee  my  soul  should  raise 
Grateful  vows  and  solemn  praise. 
And,  when  every  blessing's  flown, 
Love  Thee  —  for  Thyself  alone. 


1496 


ALEXANDER    BARCLAY 

(1475-1552) 

j^arclay's  reputation  rests  upon  his  translation  of  the  famous 
<Ship  of  Fools  ^  and  his  original  <  Eclogues.  >  A  controversy 
as  to  the  land  of  his  birth  — an  event  which  happened 
about  the  year  1475  —  has  lasted  from  his  century  to  our  own.  The 
decision  in  favor  of  Scotland  rests  upon  the  testimony  of  two  wit- 
nesses: first,  Dr.  William  Bullim,  a  younger  contemporary  of  Barclay, 
who  mentions  him  in  <  A  Dialogue  Both  Pleasaunt  and  Pietifull 
Wherein  is  a  Godlie  Regement  Against  the  Fever  Pestilence  with  a 
Consolation  and  Comforte  Against  Death/  which  was  published  in 
1564;  and  secondly,  Barclay  himself. 

Bullim  groups  the  Muses  at  the  foot  of  Parnassus,  and  gathers 
about  them  Greek  and  Latin  poets,  and  such  Englishmen  as  Chaucer, 
Gower,  Skelton,  and  Barclay,  the  latter  <<  with  an  hoopyng  russet 
long  coate,  with  a  pretie  hood  in  his  necke,  and  five  knottes  upon 
his  girdle,  after  Francis's  tricks.  He  was  borne  beyond  the  cold 
river  of  Twede.  He  lodged  upon  a  sweetebed  of  chamomill  under 
the  sinamone-tree :  about  him  many  shepherdes  and  shepe,  with 
pleasaunte  pipes;  greatly  abhorring  the  life  of  Courtiers,  Citizens, 
Usurers,  and  Banckruptes,  etc.,  whose  dales  are  miserable.  And  the 
estate  of  shepherdes  and  countrie  people  he  accompted  moste  happie 
and  sure.^^  Deprived  of  its  poetic  fancy,  this  passage  means  that 
Barclay  was  a  monk  of  the  order  of  St.  Francis,  that  he  Avas  born 
north  of  the  Tweed,  that  his  verse  was  infused  with  such  bitterness 
and  tonic  qualities  as  camomile  possesses,  and  that  he  advocated  the 
cause  of  the  country  people  in  his  independent  and  admirable  <  Ec- 
logues,* another  title  for  the  first  three  of  which  is  <  Miseryes  of 
Courtiers  and  Courtes  of  all  Princes  in  General.  > 

Barclay  was  educated  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  and  upon  his 
return  to  England  after  several  years  of  residence  abroad,  he  was 
made  one  of  the  priests  of  Saint  Mary  Ottery,  an  institution  of  devout 
practice  and  learning  in  Devonshire.  Here  in  1508  was  finished 
<The  Shyp  of  Folys  of  the  Worlde  translated  out  of  Laten,  Frenche, 
and  Doche  into  Englysshe  tonge  by  Alexander  Barclay,  Preste,  and 
at  that  time  chaplen  in  the  sayd  College.* 

After  his  work  was  completed  Barclay  went  to  London,  where 
his  poem  was  <^  imprentyd  ...  in  Fleet  Street  at  the  signe  of 
Saynt  George  by  Rycharde  Pyreson  to  hys  Coste  and  charge:   ended 


ALEXANDER   BARCLAY  I^C); 

the  yere  of  our  Saviour  MDIX.  the  XIII.  day  of  December.  *>  That  he 
became  a  Benedictine  and  lived  at  the  monastery  of  the  order  at 
Ely  is  evident  from  his  < Eclogues.*  Here  he  translated  at  the 
in.stance  of  Sir  Giles  Arlington,  Knight,  <  The  Myrrour  of  Good  Man- 
ers,*  from  a  Latin  elegiac  poem  which  Dominic  Mancini  published 
in  the  year  1516. 

"It  was  about  this  period  of  his  life,**  says  Mr.  jamieson  in  his 
admirable  edition  of  the  <  Ship  of  Fools,*  "probably  the  period  of 
the  full  bloom  of  his  popularity,  that  the  quiet  life  of  the  poet  and 
priest  was  interrupted  by  the  recognition  of  his  eminence  in  the 
highest  quarters,  and  by  a  request  for  his  aid  in  maintaining  the 
honor  of  the  country  on  an  occasion  to  which  the  eyes  of  all  Europe 
were  then  directed.  In  a  letter  to  Wolsey  dated  loth  April,  1520, 
Sir  Nicholas  Vaux  —  busied  with  the  preparation  for  that  meeting  of 
Henry  VIII.  and  Francis  I.  called  the  Field  of  the  Cloth  of  Gold  — 
begs  the  Cardinal  to  send  them  .  .  .  Maistre  Barkleye,  the  Black 
Monke  and  Poete,  to  devise  histoires  and  convenient  raisons  to  flor- 
isshe  the  buildings  and  banquet  house  withal.** 

He  became  a  Franciscan,  the  habit  of  which  order  BuUim  refers 
to ;  and  "  sure  'tis,  **  says  Wood,  "  that  living  to  see  his  monastery 
dissolv'd,  in  1539,  at  the  general  dissolution  by  act  of  Henry  VIII., 
he  became  vicar  of  Much  Badew  in  Essex,  and  in  1546,  the  same 
year,  of  the  Church  of  St.  Matthew  the  Apostle  at  Wokey,  in  Som- 
ersetshire, and  finally  in  1552,  the  year  in  which  he  died,  of  that  of 
All  Saints,  Lombard  Street,  London.  In  his  younger  days  he  was 
esteemed  a  good  poet  and  orator,  but  when  years  came  on,  he  spent 
his  time  mostly  in  pious  matters,  and  in  reading  the  histories  of 
Saints.** 

*  The  Ship  of  Fools  *  is  the  most  important  work  associated  with 
Barclay's  name.  It  was  a  translation  of  Sebastian  Brandt's  *■  Stulti- 
fera  Navis,*  a  book  which  had  attracted  universal  attention  on  the 
Continent  when  it  appeared  in  1494.  In  his  preface,  Barclay  admits 
that  "  it  is  not  translated  word  by  word  according  to  the  verses  of  my 
actor.  For  -I  have  but  only  drawn  into  our  mother  tongue  in  rude 
language  the  sentences  of  the  verses  as  near  as  the  paucity  of  my 
wit  will  suffer  me,  sometime  adding,  sometime  detracting  and  taking 
away  such  things  as  seemeth  me  necessary.**  The  classes  and  con- 
ditions of  society  that  Barclay  knew  were  as  deserving  of  satire  as 
those  of  Germany.  He  tells  us  that  his  work  was  undertaken  "to 
cleanse  the  vanity  and  madness  of  foolish  people,  of  whom  over  great 
number  is  in  the  Realm  of  England.** 

The  diction  of  Barclay's  version  is  exceptionally  fine.  Jamieson 
calls  it  "a  rich  and  unique  exhibition  of  early  art,**  and  says:  —  "Page 
after  page,  even  in  the  antique  spelling  of  Pynson's  edition,   may  be 


1498 


ALEXANDER  BARCLAY 


read  by  the  ordinary  reader  of  to-day  without  reference  to  a  diction- 
ary; and  when  reference  is  required,  it  will  be  found  in  nine  cases 
out  of  ten  that  the  archaism  is  Saxon,  not  Latin.  This  is  all  the 
more  remarkable  that  it  occurs  in  the  case  of  a  priest  translating 
mainly  from  the  Latin  and  French,  and  can  only  be  explained  with 
reference  to  his  standpoint  as  a  social  reformer  of  the  broadest  type, 
and  to  his  evident  intention  that  his  book  should  be  an  appeal  to  all 
classes,  but  especially  to  the  mass  of  people  for  amendment  of  their 
follies." 

As  the  original  work  belonged  to  the  German  satirist,  the  extract 
from  the  *  Ship  of  Fools  ^  is  placed  under  the  essay  entitled  <  Sebastian 
Brandt.^  His  ^Eclogues'  show  Barclay  at  his  best.  They  portray  the 
manners  and  customs  of  the  period,  and  are  full  of  local  proverbs 
and  wise  sayings.  According  to  Warton,  Barclay's  are  the  first 
<  Eclogues  *  that  appeared  in  the  English  language.  <<  They  are  like 
Petrarch's, >*  he  says,  "and  Mantuans  of  the  moral  and  satirical  kind; 
and  contain  but  few  touches  of  moral  description  and  bucolic  im- 
agery." Two  shepherds  meet  to  talk  about  the  pleasures  and  crosses 
of  rustic  life  and  life  at  court.  The  hoary  locks  of  the  one  show 
that  he  is  old.  His  suit  of  Kendal  green  is  threadbare,  his  rough 
boots  are  patched,  and  the  torn  side  of  his  coat  reveals  a  bottle  never 
full  and  never  empty.  His  wallet  contains  bread  and  cheese;  he  has 
a  crook,  and  an  oaten  pipe.  His  name  is  Cornix,  and  he  boasts  that 
he  has  had  worldly  experience.  The  other  shepherd,  Coridon,  having 
seen  nothing,  complains  of  country  life.  He  grumbles  at  the  sum- 
mer's heat  and  the  winter's  cold ;  at  beds  on  the  flinty  ground,  and 
the  dangers  of  sleeping  where  the  wolves  may  creep  in  to  devour 
the  sheep;  of  his  stiff  rotigh  hands,  and  his  parched,  wrinkled,  and 
weather-beaten  skin.  He  asks  whether  all  men  are  so  unhappy.  Cor- 
nix, refreshing  himself  at  intervals  with  his  bottle  and  crusts,  shows 
him  the  small  amount  of  liberty  at  court,  discourses  upon  the  folly 
of  ambition,  lays  bare  the  rapine,  avarice,  and  covetousness  of  the 
worldly-minded,  and  demonstrates  that  the  court  is  "  painted  fair  with- 
out, but  within  it  is  ugly  and  vile."  He  then  gives  the  picture  of 
a  courtier's  life,  which  is  cited  below.  He  tells  how  the  minstrels 
and  singers,  philosophers,  poets,  and  orators  are  but  the  slaves  of 
patronizing  princes;  how  beautiful  women  deceive;  describes  to  him, 
who  has  known  nothing  but  a  diet  of  bread  and  cheese,  the  delights 
of  the  table;  dilates  on  the  cups  of  silver  and  gold,  and  the  crys- 
tal glass  shining  with  red  and  yellow  wine ;  the  sewers  bearing 
in  roasted  crane,  gorgeous  peacocks,  and  savory  joints  of  beef  and 
mutton;  the  carver  wielding  his  dexterous  knife;  the  puddings,  the 
pasties,  the  fish  fried  in  sweet  oils  and  garnished  with  herbs;  the 
costumes  of  the  men  and  women  in  cloth  of  gold  and  silver  and  gay 


ALEXANDER   BARCLAY 


1499 


damask;  the  din  of  music,  voices,  laughter,  and  jests;  and  then 
paints  a  picture  of  the  lords  and  ladies  who  plunge  their  knives  into 
the  meats  and  their  hands  into  platters,  spilling  wine  and  gravy 
upon  their  equally  gluttonous  neighbors.     He  finishes  by  saying:  — 

« Shepherds  have  not  so  wretched  lives  as  they: 
Though  they  live  poorely  on  cruddes,  chese,  and  whey. 
On  apples,  plummes,  and  drinke  cleree  water  deepe, 
As  it  were  lordes  reigning  among  their  sheepe. 
The  ^vTetched  lazar  with  clinking  of  his  bell, 
Hath  life  which  doth  the  courtiers  excell; 
The  caytif  begger  hath  meate  and  libertie, 
When  courtiers  hunger  in  harde  captivitie. 
The  poore  man  beggeth  nothing  hurting  his  name, 
As  touching  courters  they  dare  not  beg  for  shame. 
And  an  olde  proverb  is  sayde  by  men  moste  sage, 
That  oft  yonge  courters  be  beggars  in  their  age.» 

The  third  <  Eclogue  *  begins  with  Coridon  relating  a  dream  that  he 
went  to  court  and  saw  the  scullions  standing 

«  about  me  thicke 
With  knives  ready  for  to  flay  me  qui  eke.* 

This  is  a  text  for  Cornix,  who  continues  his  tirade,  and  convinces 
Coridon  of  the  misery  of  the  court  and  his  happier  life,  ending  as 
follows:  — 

«Than  let  all  shepheardes,  from  hence  to  Salisbury 
With  easie  riches,  live  well,  laugh  and  be  mery, 
Pipe  under  shadowes,  small  riches  hath  most  rest, 
In  greatest  seas  moste  sorest  is  tempest. 
The  court  is  nought  els  but  a  tempesteous  sea; 
Avoyde  the  rockes.     Be  ruled  after  me.>> 

The  fourth  <  Eclogue  >  is  a  dialogue  on  the  rich  man's  treatment  of 
poets,  by  two  shepherds,  Codrus  and  Menalcas,  musing  in  <<  shadowe 
on  the  green,*  while  their  snowy  flocks  graze  on  the  sweet  meadow. 
This  contains  a  fine  allegorical  description  of  <  Labour.  * 

The  fifth  <  Eclogue*  is  the  <  Cytezen  and  the  Uplondyshman.* 
Here  the  scene  changes,  and  two  shepherds,  Faustus  and  Amyntas, 
discourse  in  a  cottage  while  the  snows  of  January  whirl  without. 
Amyntas  has  learned  in  London  ^Ho  go  so  manerly.*  Not  a  wrinkle 
may  be  found  in  his  clothes,  not  a  hair  on  his  cloak,  and  he  wears 
a  brooch  of  tin  high  on  his  bonnet.  He  has  been  hostler,  coster- 
monger,  and  taverner,  and  sings  the  delights  of  the  city.  Faustus, 
the  rustic,  is  contented  with  his  lot.  The  ^  Cytezen  and  the  Uplond- 
yshman  *  was  printed  from  the  original  edition  of  Wynkyn  de  Worde, 
■with  a  preface  by  F.  W.  Fairholt,  Percy  Society  (Vol,  xxii.). 


1500  ALEXANDER   BARCLAY 

Other  works  ascribed  to  Barclay  are:  —  <  The  Figure  of  Oitr  Holy- 
Mother  Church,  Oppressed  by  the  French  King*;  <  The  Lyfe  of  the 
Glorious  Martyr  Saynt  George,*  translated  (from  Mantuan)  by  Alex- 
ander Barclay ;  *■  The  Lyfe  of  the  Blessed  Martyr,  Saynte  Thomas  * ; 
<  Contra  Skeltonum,*  in  which  the  quarrel  he  had  with  his  contem- 
porary poet,- John  Skelton,  was  doubtless  continued. 

Estimates  of  Barclay  may  be  found  in  <  The  Ship  of  Fools,*  edited 
by  T.  H.  Jamieson  (1874);  ^  Sibbald's  Chronicle  of  Scottish  Poetry,* 
from  the  thirteenth  century  to  the  union  of  the  crowns  (1802);  *The 
History  of  English  Poetry,*  by  Thomas  Warton  (1824);  <  The  History 
of  Scottish  Poetry,)  by  David  Irving  (1861);  and  the  Cambridge  History 
of  English  Literature,  Vol.  iii.  ch.  iv. 


THE   COURTIER'S   LIFE 

Second  Eclogue 

CORNIX 

SOME  men  deliteth  beholding  men  to  fight. 
Or  goodly  knights  in  pleasaunt  apparayle. 
Or  sturdie  soldiers  in  bright  harnes  and  male, 
Or  an  army  arrayde  ready  to  the  warre. 
Or  to  see  them  fight,  so  that  he  stand  afarre. 
Some  glad  is  to  see  those  ladies  beauteous 
Goodly  appoynted  in  clothing  sumpteous: 
A  number  of  people  appoynted  in  like  wise 
In  costly  clothing  after  the  newest  gise, 
Sportes,  disgising,  fayre  coursers  mount  and  praunce. 
Or  goodly  ladies  and  knightes  sing  and  daunce, 
To  see  fayre  houses  and  curious  picture, 
Or  pleasaunt  hanging  or  sumpteous  vesture 
Of  silke,  of  purpure  or  golde  moste  oriente, 
And  other  clothing  divers  and  excellent, 
Hye  curious  buildinges  or  palaces  royall, 
Or  chapels,  temples  fayre  and  substantial. 
Images  graven  or  vaultes  curious, 
Gardeyns  and  medowes,  or  place  delicious, 
Forestes  and  parkes  well  furnished  with  dere. 
Cold  pleasaunt  streams  or  welles  fayre  and  clere, 
Curious  cundites  or  shadowie  mountaynes, 
Swete  pleasaunt  valleys,  laundes  or  playnes, 
Houndes.  and  such  other  things  manyfolde 
Some  men  take  pleasour  and  solace  to  beholde. 


ALEXANDER   BARCLAY 


1501 


But  all  thftse  pleasoures  be  much  more  jocounde, 

To  private  persons  which  not  to  court  be  bounde, 

Than  to  such  other  whiche  of  necessitie 

Are  bounde  to  the  court  as  in  captivitie ; 

For  they  which  be  bounde  to  princes  without  fayle 

When  they  must  nedes  be  present  in  battayle, 

When  shall  they  not  be  at  large  to  see  the  sight, 

But  as  souldiours  in  the  middest  of  the  fight, 

To  runne  here  and  there  sometime  his  foe  to  smite. 

And  oftetimes  wounded,  herein  is  small  delite. 

And  more  muste  he  think  his  body  to  defende, 

Than  for  any  pleasour  about  him  to  intende, 

And  oft  is  he  faynt  and  beaten  to  the  grounde, 

I  trowe  in  suche  sight  small  pleasour  may  be  founde. 

As  for  fayre  ladies,  clothed  in  silke  and  golde, 

In  court  at  thy  pleasour  thou  canst  not  beholde. 

At  thy  princes  pleasour  thou  shalt  them  only  see, 

Then  suche  shalt  thou  see  which  little  set  by  thee, 

Whose  shape  and  beautie  may  so  inflame  thine  heart. 

That  thought  and  languor  may  cause  thee  for  to  smart. 

For  a  small  sparcle  may  kindle  love  certayne. 

But  skantly  Severne  may  quench  it  clene  againe; 

And  beautie  blindeth  and  causeth  man  to  set 

His  hearte  on  the  thing  which  he  shall  never  get. 

To  see  inen  clothed  in  silkes  pleasauntly 

It  is  small  pleasour,   and  ofte  causeth  envy. 

While  thy  lean  jade  halteth  by  thy  side, 

To  see  another  upon  a  courser  ride. 

Though  he  be  neyther  gentleman  nor  knight, 

Nothing  is  thy  fortune,  thy  hart  cannot  be  light. 

As  touching  sportes  and  games  of  pleasaunce, 

To  sing,  to  revell,  and  other  daliaunce : 

Who  that  will  truely  upon  his  lord  attende, 

Unto  suche  sportes  he  seldome  may  entende. 

Palaces,  pictures,   and  temples  sumptuous. 

And  other  buildings  both  gay  and  curious, 

These  may  marchauntes  more  at  their  pleasour  see    . 

Men  suche  as  in  court  be  bounde  alway  to  bee. 

Sith  kinges  for  moste  part  passe  not  their  regions. 

Thou  seest  nowe  cities  of  foreyn  nations. 

Suche  outwarde  pleasoures  may  the  people  see, 

So  may  not  courtiers  for  lacke  of  libertie. 

As  for  these  pleasours  of  thinges  vanable 

Whiche  in  the  fieldes  appeareth  delectable, 


I503  ALEXANDER   BARCLAY 

But  seldome  season  mayest  thou  obtayne  respite. 

The  same  to  beholde  with  pleasour  and  delite, 

Sometime  the  courtier  remayneth  halfe  the  yere 

Close  within  walls  muche  like  a  prisonere, 

To  make  escapes  some  seldome  times  are  wont, 

Save  when  the  powers  have  pleasour  for  to  hunt, 

Or  its  otherwise  themselfe  to  recreate, 

And  then  this  pleasour  shall  they  not  love  but  hate; 

For  then  shall  they  foorth  most  chiefely  to  their  payne. 

When  they  in  mindes  would  at  home  remayne. 

Other  in  the  frost,  hayle,  or  els  snowe, 

Or  when  some  tempest  or  mightie  wind  doth  blowe, 

Or  else  in  great  heat  and  fervour  excessife. 

But  close  in  houses  the  moste  parte  waste  their  life, 

Of  colour  faded,  and  choked  were  with  duste: 

This  is  of  courtiers  the  joy  and  all  the  lust. 

CORIDON 

What!  yet  may  they  sing  and  with  fayre  ladies  daunce. 
Both  commen  and  laugh;  herein  is  some  pleasaunce. 

CORNIX 

Nay,  nay,  Coridon,  that  pleasour  is  but  small. 

Some  to  contente  what  man  will  pleasour  call, 

For  some  in  the  daunce  his  pincheth  by  the  hande, 

Which  gladly  would  see  him  stretched  in  a  bande. 

Some  galand  seketh  his  favour  to  purchase 

Which  playne  abhorreth  for  to  beholde  his  face. 

And  still  in  dauncing  moste  parte  inclineth  she 

To  one  muche  viler  and  more  abject  then  he. 

No  day  over  passeth  but  that  in  court  men  finde 

A  thousande  thinges  to  vexe  and  greve  their  mindc; 

Alway  thy  foes  are  present  in  thy  sight, 

And  often  so  great  is  their  degree  and  might 

That  nedes  must  thou  kisse  the  hand  which  did  thee  harm, 

Though  thou  would  see  it  cut  gladly  from  the  arme. 

And  briefly  to  speake.  if  thou  to  courte  resorte, 

If  thou  see  one  thing  of  pleasour  or  comfort, 

Thou  shalt  see  many,  before  or  thou  depart, 

To  thy  displeasour  and  pensiveness  of  heart: 

So  findeth  thy  sight  there  more  of  bitternes 

And  of  displeasour,  than  pleasour  and  gladnes. 


1503 


RICHARD   HARRIS   BARHAM 

(1788-1845) 

Ihe  author  of  the  ^Ingoldsby  Legends^  belonged  to  a  well- 
defined  and  delightful  class  of  men,  chiefly  found  in  mod- 
ern England,  and  indeed  mostly  bred  and  made  possible  by 
the  conditions  of  English  society  and  the  Anglican  Church.  It  is 
that  of  clergymen  who  in  the  public  eye  are  chiefly  wits  and  diners- 
out,  jokers  and  literary  humorists,  yet  are  conscientious  and  devoted 
ministers  of  their  religion  and  curators  of  their  religious  charges, 
honoring  their  profession  and  humanity  by  true  and  useful  lives  and 
lovable  characters.  They  are  men  of  the 
sort  loathed  by  Lewis  Carroll's  heroine  in 
the  <Two  Voices,* 

«a  kind  of  folk 
Who  have  no  horror  of  a  joke,>> 

and  indeed  love  it  dearly,  but  are  as  firm 
in  principle  and  unostentatiously  dutiful  in 
conduct  as  if  they  were  leaden  Puritans  or 
narrow  devotees. 

By  far  the  best  remembered  of  this 
class,  for  themselves  or  their  work,  are 
Sydney  Smith  and  Richard  Harris  Barham; 
but  their  relative  repute  is  one  of  the  odd- 
est paradoxes  in  literary  history.  Roughly  speaking,  the  one  is 
remembered  and  unread,  the  other  read  and  unremembered.  Syd- 
ney Smith's  name  is  almost  as  familiar  to  the  masses  as  Scott's,  and 
few  could  tell  a  line  that  he  wrote;  Barham's  writing  is  almost  as 
familiar  as  Scott's,  and  few  would  recognize  his  name.  Yet  he  is  in 
the  foremost  rank  of  humorists;  his  place  is  wholly  unique,  and  is 
likely  to  remain  so.  It  will  be  an  age  before  a  similar  combination 
of  tastes  and  abilities  is  found  once  more.  Macaulay  said  truly  of 
Sir  Walter  Scott  that  he  ^*  combined  the  minute  learning  of  an  anti- 
quary with  the  fire  of  a  great  poet.'*  Barham  combined  a  like  learn- 
ing in  different  fields,  and  joined  to  a  different  outlook  and  temper 
of  mind,  with  the  quick  perceptions  of  a  great  wit,  the  brimming 
zest  and  high  spirits  of  a  great  joker,  the  genial  nature  and  light- 
ness of  a  born  man  of  the  world,  and  the  gifts  of  a  wonderful 
improvisatore  in  verse.  Withal,  he  had  just  enough  of  serious  pur- 
pose to  give  much  of  his  work  a  certain  measure  of  cohesive  unity. 


Richard  H.   Barham 


1^04  RICHARD  HARRIS  BARHAM 

and  thus  impress  it  on  the  mind  as  ,no  collection  of  random  skits 
could  do.  That  purpose  is  the  feathering  which  steadies  the  arrows 
and  sends  them  home. 

It  is  pleasant  to  know  that  one  who  has  given  so  good  a  time  to 
others  had  a  very  good  time  himself;  that  we  are  not,  as  so  often 
happens,  relishing  a  farce  that  stood  for  tragedy  with  the  maker,  and 
substituting  our  laughter  for  his  tears.  Barham  had  the  cruel  sor- 
rows of  personal  bereavement  so  few  escape;  but  in  material  things 
his  career  was  wholly  among  pleasant  ways.  He  was  well  born  and 
with  means,  well  educated,  well  nurtured.  He  was  free  from  the 
sordid  squabbles  or  anxious  watching  and  privation  which  fall  to  the 
lot  of  so  many  of  the  best.  He  was  happy  in  his  marriage  and  its 
attendant  home  and  family,  and  most  fortunate  in  his  friendships 
and  the  superb  society  he  enjoyed.  His  birth  and  position  as  a  gen- 
tleman of  good  landed  family,  combined  with  his  profession,  opened 
all  doors  to  him. 

But  it  was  the  qualities  personal  to  himself,  after  all,  which  made 
these  things  available  for  enjoyment.  His  desires  were  moderate; 
he  counted  success  what  more  eager  and  covetous  natures  might 
have  esteemed  comparative  failure.  His  really  strong  intellect  and 
wide  knowledge  and  cultivation  enabled  him  to  meet  the  foremost 
men  of  letters  on  equal  terms.  His  kind  heart,  generous  nature, 
exuberant  fun,  and  entertaining  conversation  endeared  him  to  every 
one  and  made  his  company  sought  by  every  one ;  they  saved  much 
trouble  from  coming  upon  him  and  lightened  what  did  come.  And 
no  blight  could  have  withered  that  perennial  fountain  of  jollity, 
drollery,  and  light-heartedness.  But  these  were  only  the  ornaments 
of  a  stanchly  loyal  and  honorable  nature,  and  a  lovable  and  unselfish 
soul.     One  of  his  friends  writes  of  him  thus:  — 

«The  profits  of  agitating  pettifoggers  would  have  materially  lessened  in  a 
district  where  he  acted  as  a  magistrate;  and  duels  would  have  been  nipped 
in  the  bud  at  bis  regimental  mess.  It  is  not  always  an  easy  task  to  do 
as  you  would  be  done  by;  but  to  think  as  you  would  be  thought  of  and 
thought  for,  and  to  feel  as  you  would  be  felt  for,  is  perhaps  still  more  diffi- 
cult, as  superior  powers  of  tact  and  intellect  are  here  required  in  order  to 
second  good  intentions.  These  faculties,  backed  by  an  imcompromising  love 
of  truth  and  fair  dealing,  indefatigable  good  nature,  and  a  nice  sense  of 
what  was  due  to  every  one  in  the  several  relations  of  life,  both  gentle  and 
simple,  rendered  our  late  friend  invaluable,  either  as  an  adviser  or  a  peace- 
maker, in   matters   of  delicate   and   difficult   handling. '> 

Barham  was  born  in  Canterbury,  England,  December  6th,  1788, 
and  died  in  London,  June  17th,  1845.  His  ancestry  was  superior,  the 
family  having  derived  its  name  from  possessions  in  Kent  in  Norman 
days.     He  lost  his  father  —  a  genial  boti  vivant  of  literary  tastes  who 


RICHARD  HARRIS  BARHAM  1^05 

seems  like  a  reduced  copy  of  his  son  —  when  but  five  years  old;  and 
became  heir  to  a  fair  estate,  including  Tappington  Hull,  the  pictur- 
esque old  gabled  mansion  so  often  imaginatively  misdescribed  in  the 
<Ingoldsby  Legends,*  but  really  having  the  famous  blood-stained 
stairway.  He  had  an  expensive  private  education,  which  was  nearly 
ended  with  his  life  at  the  age  of  fourteen  by  a  carriage  accident 
which  shattered  and  mangled  his  right  arm,  crippling  it  perma- 
nently. As  so  often  happens,  the  disaster  was  really  a  piece  of  good 
fortune:  it  turned  him  to  or  confirmed  him  in  quiet  antiquarian 
scholarship,  and  established  connections  which  ultimately  led  to  the 
^  Legends  * ;    he  may  owe  immortality  to  it. 

After  passing  through  St.  Paul's  (London)  and  Brasenose  (Oxford), 
he  studied  law,  but  finally  entered  the  church.  After  a  couple  of 
small  curacies  in  Kent,  he  was  made  rector  of  Snargate  and  curate 
of  Warehorn,  near  Romney  Marsh ;  all  four  in  a  district  where  smug- 
gling was  a  chief  industry,  and  the  Marsh  in  especial  a  noted  haunt 
of  desperadoes  (for  smugglers  then  took  their  lives  in  their  hands), 
of  which  the  <  Legends*  are  rich  in  reminiscences.  In  18 19,  during 
this  incumbency,  he  wrote  a  novel,  <  Baldwin,*  which  was  a  failure; 
and  part  of  another,  <  My  Cousin  Nicholas,*  which,  finished  fifteen 
years  later,  had  fair  success  as  a  serial  in  Blackwood's  Magazine. 

An  opportunity  offering  in  1821,  he  stood  for  a  minor  canonry  in 
St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  London,  and  obtained  it;  his  income  was 
less  than  before,  but  he  had  entered  the  metropolitan  field,  which 
brought  him  rich  enjoyment  and  permanent  fame.  He  paid  a  terri- 
ble price  for  them:  his  unhealthy  London  house  cost  him  the  lives 
of  three  of  his  children.  To  make  up  for  his  shortened  means  he 
became  editor  of  the  London  Chronicle  and  a  contributor  to  various 
other  periodicals,  including  the  notorious  weekly  John  Bull,  some- 
time edited  by  Theodore  Hook.  In  1824  he  became  a  priest  in  the 
Chapel  Royal  at  St.  James's  Palace,  and  soon  after  gained  a  couple 
of  excellent  livings  in  Essex,  which  put  him  at  ease  financially. 

He  was  inflexible  in  principle,  a  firm  Tory,  though  without  ran- 
cor. He  was  very  High  Church,  but  had  no  sympathy  with  -the 
Oxford  movement  or  Catholicism.  He  preached  careful  and  sober 
sermons,  without  oratorical  display  and  with  rigid  avoidance  of  lev- 
ity. He  would  not  make  the  church  a  field  either  for  fireworks  or 
jokes,  or  even  for  displays  of  scholarship  or  intellectual  gymnastics. 
In  his  opinion,  religious  establishments  were  kept  up  to  advance 
religion  and  morals.  And  both  he  and  his  wife  wrought  zealously  in 
the  humble  but  exacting  field   of  parochial  good  works. 

He  was,  however,  fast  becoming  one  of  the  chief  ornaments  of 
that  brilliant  group  of  London  wits  whose  repute  still  vibrates  from 
the  early  part  of  the  century.  Many  of  them  —  actors,  authors, 
III— 95 


1506  RICHARD   HARRIS   BARHAM 

artists,  musicians,  and  others  —  met  at  the  Garrick  Club,  and  Barham 
joined  it.  The  names  of  Sydney  Smith  and  Theodore  Hook  are 
enough  to  show  what  it  was;  but  there  were  others  equally  delight- 
ful,—  not  the  least  so,  or  least  useful,  a  few  who  could  not  see  a  joke 
at  all,  and  whose  simplicity  and  good  nature  made  them  butts  for 
the  hoaxes  and  solemn  chaff  of  the  rest.  Barham's  diary,  quoted  in 
his  son's  ^Life,^  gives  an  exquisite  instance. 

In  1834  his  old  schoolmaster  Bentley  established  Bentley's  Miscel- 
lany; and  Barham  was  asked  for  contributions.  The  first  he  sent 
was  the  amusing  but  quite  "  conceivable  ^*  <  Spectre  of  Tappington  ' ; 
but  there  soon  began  the  immortal  series  of  versified  local  stories, 
legendary  church  miracles,  antiquarian  curios,  witty  summaries  of 
popular  plays,  skits  on  London  life,  and  so  on,  under  the  pseudonym 
of  *  Thomas  Ingoldsby,^  which  sprang  instantly  into  wide  popularity, 
and  have  never  fallen  from  public  favor  since  —  nor  can  they  till 
appreciation  of  humor  is  dead  in  the  world.  They  were  collected 
and  illustrated  by  Leech,  Cruikshank,  and  others,  who  were  inspired 
by  them  to  some  of  their  best  designs:  perhaps  the  most  perfect 
realization  in  art  of  the  Devil  in  his  moments  of  jocose  triumph  is 
Leech's  figure  in  <  The  House- Warming.  ^  A  later  series  appeared  in 
Colburn's  New  Monthly  Magazine  in   1843. 

He  wrote  some  excellent  pieces  (of  their  kind)  in  prose,  besides 
the  one  already  mentioned:  the  weird  and  well-constructed  < Leech  of 
Folkestone^  and  the  <  Passage  in  the  Life  of  Henry  Harris,*  both  half- 
serious  tales  of  mediaeval  magic;  the  thoroughly  Ingoldsbian  ^Legend 
of  Sheppey,'  with  its  irreverent  farce,  high  animal  spirits,  and  anti- 
quarianism;  the  equally  characteristic  <  Lady  Rohesia,*  which  would 
be  vulgar  but  for  his  sly  wit  and  drollery.  But  none  of  these  are  as 
familiar  as  the  versified  *  Legends,*  nor  have  they  the  astonishing 
variety  of  entertainment  found  in  the  latter. 

The  <  Ingoldsby  Legends  *  have  been  called  an  English  naturaliza- 
tion of  the  French  metrical  contcs ;  but  Barham  owes  nothing  to  his 
French  models  save  the  siiggestion  of  method  and  form.  Not  only  is 
hi^  matter  all  his  own,  but  he  has  Anglified  the  whole  being  oi  the 
metrical  form  itself.  His  facility  of  versification,  the  way  in  which 
the  whole  language  seems  to  be  liquid  in  his  hands  and  ready  to 
pour  into  any  channel  of  verse,  was  one  of  the  marvelous  things  of 
literature.  It  did  not  need  the  free  random  movement  of  the  majority 
of  the  tales,  where  the  lines  may  be  anything  from  one  foot  to  six, 
from  spondaic  to  dactylic:  in  some  of  them  he  tied  himself  down  to 
the  most  rigid  and  inflexible  metrical  forms,  and  moved  as  lightly 
and  freely  in  those  fetters  as  if  they  were  non-existent.  As  to  the 
astonishing  rhymes  which  meet  us  at  every  step,  they  form  in  them- 
selves a  poignant  kind  of  wit;  often  double  and  even  treble,  one  word 


RICHARD  HARRIS  BARHAM  jcq-j 

rhyming  with  an  entire  phrase  or  one  phrase  with  another,  — not 
only  of  the  oddest  kind,  but  as  nicely  adapted  to  the  necessities  of 
expression  and  meaning  as  if  intended  or  invented  for  that  purpose 
alone, — they  produce  on  us  the  effect  of  the  richest  humor. 

One  of  his  most  diverting  *^  properties  **  is  the  set  of  <*  morals  >*  he 
draws  to  everything,  of  nonsensical  literalness  and  infantile  gravity, 
the  perfection  of  solemn  fooling.  Thus  in  the  ^  Lay  of  St.  Cuthbert,* 
where  the  Devil  has  captured  the  heir  of  the  house, 

«Whom  the  nurse  had  forgot  and  left  there  in  his  chair, 
Alternately  sucking  his  thumb  and  his  pear,» 

the  moral  is  drawn,  among  others, — 

« Perhaps  it's  as  well  to  keep  children  from  plums, 
And  pears  in  their  season  —  and  sucking  their  thumbs.^ 

And  part  of  the  moral  to  the  <  Lay  of  St.  Medard*  is  — 

« Don't  give  people  nicknames!  don't,  even  in  fun. 
Call  any  one  <  snuff -colored  son  of  a  gun  > ! » 

And  they  generally  wind  up  with  some  slyly  shrewd  piece  of  worldly 
wisdom  and  wit.  Thus,  the  closing  moral  to  *■  The  Blasphemer's 
Warning*  is:  — 

«To  married  men  this — For  the  rest  of  your  lives, 
Think  how  your  misconduct  may  act  on  your  wives! 
Don't  swear  then  before  them,  lest  haply  they  faint, 
Or  —  what  sometimes  occurs  —  run  away  with  a  Saint !  >> 

Often  they  are  broader  yet,  and  intended  for  the  club  rather  than  the 
family.  Indeed,  the  tales  as  a  whole  are  club  tales,  with  an  audi- 
ence of  club-men  always  in  mind;  not,  be  it  remembered,  bestialities 
like  their  French  counterparts,  or  the  later  English  and  American 
improvements  on  the  French,  not  even  objectionable  for  general  read- 
ing, but  full  of  exclusively  masculine  joking,  allusions,  and  winks, 
unintelligible  to  the  other  sex,  and  not  welcome  if  they  were  intelli- 
gible. 

He  has  plenty  of  melody,  but  it  is  hardly  recognized  because  of 
the  doggerel  meaning,  which  swamps  the  music  in  the  farce.  And 
this  applies  to  more  important  things  than  the  melody.  The  average 
reader  floats  on  the  surface  of  this  rapid  and  foamy  stream,  covered 
with  sticks  and  straws  and  flowers  and  bonbons,  and  never  realizes 
its  depth  and  volume.  This  light  frothy  verse  is  only  the  vehicle  of 
a  solid  and  laborious  antiquarian  scholarship,  of  an  immense  knowl- 
edge of  the  world  and  society,  books  and  men.  He  modestly  dis- 
claimed having  any  imagination,  and  said  he  must  always  have 
facts  to  work  upon.      This   was   true;    but  the  same  may  be  said  of 


i5oS 


RICHARD  HARRIS  BARHAM 


some  great  poets,  who  have  lacked  invention  except  around  a  skele- 
ton ready  furnished.  What  was  true  of  Keats  and  Fitzgerald  can- 
not nullify  the  merit  of  Barham.  His  fancy  erected  a  huge  and 
consistent  superstructure  on  a  very  slender  foundation.  The  same 
materials  lay  ready  to  the  hands  of  thousands  of  others,  who,  how- 
ever, saw  only  stupid  monkish  fables  or  dull  country  superstition. 

His  own  explanation  of  his  handling  of  the  church  legends  tickles 
a  critic's  sense  of  humor  almost  as  much  as  the  verses  themselves. 
It  is  true  that  while  differing  utterly  in  his  tone  of  mind,  and  his 
attitude  toward  the  mediaeval  stories,  from  that  of  the  mediaeval 
artists  and  sculptors, —  whose  gargoyles  and  other  grotesques  were 
carved  without  a  thought  of  travesty  on  anything  religious,  — he  is  at 
one  with  them  in  combining  extreme  irreverence  of  form  with  a  total 
lack  of  irreverence  of  spirit  toward  the  real  spiritual  mysteries  of 
religion.  He  burlesques  saints  and  devils  alike,  mocks  the  swarm  of 
miracles  of  the  mediaeval  Church,  makes  salient  all  the  ludicrous 
aspects  of  mediaeval  religious  faith  in  its  devout  credulity  and  bar- 
barous gropings;  yet  he  never  sneers  at  holiness  or  real  aspiration, 
and  through  all  the  riot  of  fun  in  his  masques,  one  feels  the  sincere 
Christian  and  the  warm-hearted  man.  But  he  was  evidently  troubled 
by  the  feeling  that  a  clergyman  ought  not  to  ridicule  any  form  in 
which  religious  feeling  had  ever  clothed  itself;  and  he  justified  him- 
self by  professing  that  he  wished  to  expose  the  absurdity  of  old 
superstitions  and  mummeries,  to  help  countervail  the  effect  of  the 
Oxford  movement.  Ingoldsby  as  a  soldier  of  Protestantism,  turning 
monkish  stories  into  rollicking  farces  in  order  to  show  up  what  he 
conceived  to  be  the  errors  of  his  opponents,  is  as  truly  Ingoldsbian  a 
figure  as  any  in  his  own  ^Legends. ^  Yet  one  need  not  accuse  him 
of  hypocrisy  or  falsehood,  hardly  even  of  self-deception.  He  felt 
that  dead  superstitions,  and  stories  not  reverenced  even  by  the 
Church  that  developed  them,  were  legitimate  material  for  anj-  use 
he  could  make  of  them;  he  felt  that  in  dressing  them  up  with  his 
wit  and  fancy  he  was  harming  nothing  that  existed,  nor  making  any 
one  look  lightly  on  the  religion  of  Christ  or  the  Church  of  Christ: 
and  that  they  were  the  property  of  an  opposing  church  body  was  a 
happy  thought  to  set  his  conscience  at  rest.  He  wrote  them  thence- 
forth with  greater  peace  of  mind  and  added  satisfaction,  and  no  doubt 
really  believed  that  he  was  doing  good  in  the  way  he  alleged.  And 
if  the  excuse  gave  to  the  world  even  one  more  of  the  inimitable 
*  Legends,^  it  was  worth  feeling  and  making. 

Barham's  nature  was  not  one  which  felt  the  problems  and  trage- 
dies of  the  world  deeply.  He  grieved  for  his  friends,  he  helped  the 
distresses  he  saw,  but  his  imagination  rested  closely  in  the  concrete. 
He   was    incapable    of  weltschmerz;   even    for    things   just    beyond   his 


RICHARD  HARRIS  BARHAM  1509 

personal  ken  he  had  little  vision  or  fancy.  His  treatment  of  the 
perpetual  problem  of  sex-temptations  and  lapses  is  a  good  example: 
he  never  seems  to  be  conscious  of  the  tragedy  they  envelop.  To 
him  they  are  always  good  jokes,  to  wink  over  or  smile  at  or  be 
indulgent  to.  No  one  would  ever  guess  from  <  Ingoldsby '  the  truth 
he  finds  even  in  <  Don  Juan,*  that 

«A  heavy  price  must  all  pay  who  thus  err. 
In  some  shape.'* 

But  we  cannot  have  everything:  if  Barham  had  been  sensitive  to 
the  tragic  side  of  life,  he  could  not  have  been  the  incomparable  fun- 
maker  he  was.  We  do  not  go  to  the  *  Ingoldsby  Legends  *  to  solace 
our  souls  when  hurt  or  remorseful,  to  brace  ourselves  for  duty,  or  to 
feel  ourselves  nobler  by  contact  with  the  expression  of  nobility.  But 
there  musl;  be  play  and  rest  for  the  senses,  as  well  as  work  and 
aspiration ;  and  there  are  worse  services  than  relieving  the  strain  of 
serious  endeavor  by  enabling  us  to  become  jolly  pagans  once  again 
for  a  little  space,  and  care  naught  for  the  morrow. 


AS   I   LAYE   A-THYNKYNGE 

THE    LAST    LINES    OF    BARHAM 

AS  I  laye  a-thynkynge,  a-thynkynge,  a-thynkynge, 
Merrie  sang  the  Birde  as  she  sat  upon  the  spraye; 
There  came  a  noble  Knighte, 
With  his  hauberke  shynynge  brighte, 
And  his  gallant  heart  was  lyghte, 
Free  and  gaye; 
As  I  laye  a-thynkynge,  he  rode  upon  his  waye. 

As  I  laye  a-thynkynge,  a-thynkynge,  a-thynkynge, 
Sadly  sang  the  Birde  as  she  sat  upon  the  tree! 
There  seemed  a  crimson  plain, 
Where  a  gallant  Knyghte  lay  slayne, 
And  a  steed  with  broken  rein 
Ran  free, 
As  I  laye  a-thynkynge,  most  pitiful  to  see! 

As  I  laye  a-thynkynge,  a-thynkynge,  a-thynkynge, 
Merrie  sang  the  Birde  as  she  sat  upon  the  boughe; 

A  lovely  mayde  came  bye. 

And  a  gentil  youth  was  nyghe. 

And  he  breathed  many  a  syghe, 
And  a  vowe; 
As  I  laye  a-thynkynge,  her  hearte  was  gladsome  now. 


rsro 


RICHARD  HARRIS  BARHAM 

As  I  laye  a-thynkynge,  a-thynkynge,  a-thynkynge. 
Sadly  sang  the  Birde  as  she  sat  upon  the  thorne; 

No  more  a  youth  was  there,  • 

But  a  Maiden  rent  her  haire, 

And  cried  in  sad  despaire, 

«That  I  was  borne !» 
As  I  laye  a-thynkynge,  she  perished  forlorne. 

As  I  laye  a-thynkynge,  a-thynkynge,  a-thynkynge. 
Sweetly  sang  the  Birde  as  she  sat  upon  the  briar; 

There  came  a  lovely  childe. 

And  his  face  was  meek  and  milde, 

Yet  joyously  he  smiled 
On  his  sire; 
As  I  laye  a-thynkynge,  a  Cherub  mote  admire. 

But  I  laye  a-thynkynge,  a-thynkynge,  a-thynkynge, 
And  sadly  sang  the  Birde  as  it  perched  upon  a  bier; 

That  joyous  smile  was  gone. 

And  the  face  was  white  and  wan, 

As  the  downe  upon  the  Swan 
Doth  appear. 
As  I  laye  a-thynkynge, — oh!   bitter  flowed  the  tear! 

As  I  laye  a-thynkynge,  the  golden  sun  was  sinking. 
Oh,  merrie  sang  that  Birde,  as  it  glittered  on  her  breast 
With  a  thousand  gorgeous  dyes; 
While  soaring  to  the  skies, 
'Mid  the  stars  she  seemed  to  rise, 
As  to  her  nest; 
As  I  laye  a-thynkynge,  her  meaning  was  exprest: — 
**  Follow,   follow  me  away, 
It  boots  not  to  delay,'*  — 
'Twas  so  she  seemed  to  saye, 
«HERE  IS  REST!» 


RICHARD    HARRIS   BARHAM  I^U 

THE   LAY   OF  ST.    CUTHBERT 

OR 

THE    DEVIL'S   DINNER-PARTY 

A    LEGEND    OF    THE    NORTH    COUNTREE 

Nobilis  quidam,  cui  nomen  Monsr.  Lescrop,  Chivaler,  cum  invitasset 
convivas,  et,  hora  convivii  jam  instante  et  apparatu  facto,  spe  frustratus  esset, 
excusantibus  se  convivis  cur  non  compararent,  prorupit  iratus  in  hsec  verba: 
«  Vemant  igitur  omnes  damones,  si  null  us  hommtan  niecum  esse  potest  /^^ 

Quod  cum  fieret,  et  Dominus,  et  famuli,  et  ancillae,  a  domo  properantes, 
forte  obliti,  infantem  in  cunis  jacentem  secum  non  auferent,  Daemones  incip- 
iunt  commessari  et  vociferari,  prospicereque  per  fenestras  formis  ursorum, 
luporum,  felium,  et  monstrare  pocula  vino  repleta.  Ak,  inquit  pater,  ubi 
infans  mens  ?  Vix  cum  haec  dixisset,  unus  ex  Daemonibus  ulnis  suis  infan- 
tem ad  fenestram  gestat,  etc. —  Chronicon  de  Bolton. 

It's  in  Bolton  Hall,  and  the  clock  strikes  One, 
And  the  roast  meat's  brown  and  the  boiled  meat's  done. 
And  the  barbecued  sucking-pig's  crisped  to  a  turn. 
And  the  pancakes  are  fried  and  beginning  to  burn; 
The  fat  stubble-goose 
Swims  in  gravy  and  juice, 
With  the  mustard  and  apple-sauce  ready  for  use ; 
Fish,   flesh,   and  fowl,   and  all  of  the  best, 
Want  nothing  but  eating  —  they're  all  ready  drest, 
But  where  is  the  Host,   and  where  is  the  Guest  ? 

Pantler  and  serving-man,   henchman  and  page 
Stand  sniffing  the  duck-stuffing  (onion  and  sage). 

And  the  scullions  and  cooks. 
With  fidgety  looks, 
Are  grumbling  and  mutt'ring,  and  scowling  as  black 
As  cooks  always  do  when  the  dinner's  put  back; 
For  though  the  board's  deckt,   and  the  napery,  fair 
As  the  unsunned  snow-flake,   is  spread  out  with  care, 
And  the  Dais  is  furnished  with  stool  and  with  chair, 
And  plate  of  orfe'verie  costly  and  rare. 
Apostle-spoons,  salt-cellar,   all  are  there. 

And  Mess  John  in  his  place, 

With  his  rubicund  face, 
And  his  hands  ready  folded,  prepared  to  say  Grace, 
Yet  where  is  the  Host? — and  his  convives  —  where? 


jei2  RICHARD   HARRIS   BARHAM 

The  Scroope  sits  lonely  in  Bolton  Hall, 

And  he  watches  the  dial  that  hangs  by  the  wall, 

He  watches  the  large  hand,  he  watches  the  small, 

And  he  fidgets  and  looks 

As  cross  as  the  cooks,  • 
And  he  utters  —  a  word  which  we'll  soften  to  ^*  Zooks !  '* 
And  he  cries,  "What  on  earth  has  become  of  them  all?  — 

What  can  delay 

De  Vaux  and  De  Saye  ? 
What  makes  Sir  Gilbert  de  Umfraville  stay  ? 
What's  gone  with  Poyntz,  and  Sir  Reginald  Braye  ? 
Why  are  Ralph  Ufford  and  Marny  away  ? 
And  De  Nokes  and  De  Styles,  and  Lord  Marmaduke  Grey  ? 

And  De  Roe? 
And  De  Doe? 
Poynings  and  Vavasour  —  where  be  they  ? 
Fitz-Walter,   Fitz-Osbert,   Fitz-Hugh,  and  Fitz-John, 
And  the  Mandevilles,  /^r^  et  filz  (father  and  son); 
Their  cards  said  <  Dinner  precisely  at  One !  * 

There's  nothing  I  hate,  in 

The  world,  like  waiting! 
It's  a  monstrous  great  bore,  when  a  Gentleman  feels 
A  good  appetite,  thus  to  be  kept  from  his  meals !  '* 

It's  in  Bolton  Hall,  and  the  clock  strikes  Two! 
And  the  scullions  and  cooks  are  themselves  "in  a  stew,** 
And  the  kitchen-maids  stand,   and  don't  know  what  to  do, 
For  the  rich  plum-puddings  are  bursting  their  bags, 
And  the  mutton  and  turnips  are  boiling  to  rags. 

And  the  fish  is  all  spoiled, 

And  the  butter's  all  oiled, 
And  the  soup's  got  cold  in  the  silver  tureen, 
And  there's  nothing,  in  short,  that  is  fit  to  be  seen! 
While  Sir  Guy  Le  Scroope  continues  to  fume. 
And  to  fret  by  himself  in  the  tapestried  room, 

And  still  fidgets  and  looks 

More  cross  than  the  cooks. 
And  repeats  that  bad  word,  which  we've  softened  to  "  Zooks  P' 

Two  o'clock's  come,  and  Two  o'clock's  gone. 

And  the  large  and  the  small  hands  move  steadily  on. 

Still  nobody's  there, 

No  De  Roos,  or  De  Clare, 
To  taste  of  the  Scroope's  mo$t  delicate  fare. 


15^3 


RICHARD   HARRIS   BARHAM 

Or  to  quaff  off  a  health  unto  Bolton's  Heir, 

That  nice  little  boy  who  sits  in  his  chair, 

Some  four  years  old,   and  a  few  months  to  spare. 

With  his  laughing  blue  eyes  and  his  long  curly  hair. 

Now  sucking  his  thumb,  and  now  munching  his  pear. 

Again  Sir  Guy  the  silence  broke, 
"It's  hard  upon  Three!  —  it's  just  on  the  stroke! 
Come,  serve  up  the  dinner!  —  A  joke  is  a  joke!>>  — 
Little  he  deems  that  Stephen  de  Hoaques, 
Who  "his  fun,"  as  the  Yankees  say,  everywhere  "pokes,* 
And  is  always  a  great  deal  too  fond  of  his  jokes, 
Has  written  a  circular  note  to  De  Nokes, 
And  De  Styles  and  De  Roe,  and  the  rest  of  the  folks, 

One  and  all. 
Great  and  small, 
Who  w^ere  asked  to  the  Hali 
To  dine  there  and  sup,   and  wind  up  with  a  ball. 
And  had  told  all  the  party  a  great  bouncing  lie,  he 
Cooked  up,  that  the  ^'^ fete  was  postponed  sine  die. 
The  dear  little  curly-wigged  heir  of  Le  Scroope 
Being  taken  alarmingly  ill  with  the  croop!" 

When  the  clock  struck  Three, 
And  the  Page  on  his  knee 
Said,  "  An't  please  you.  Sir  Guy  Le  Scroope,   On  a  servi!  * 
And  the  Knight  found  the  banquet-hall  empty  and  clear, 
With  nobody  near 
To  partake  of  his  cheer, 
He  stamped,  and  he  stormed  —  then  his  language!  —  Oh  dear! 
'Twas  awful  to  see,  and  'twas  awful  to  hear! 
And  he  cried  to  the  button-decked  Page  at  his  knee, 
Who  had  told  him  so  civilly  "6>«  a  servi, ^^ 
"  Ten  thousand  fiends  seize  them,  wherever  they  be ! 
— The  Devil  take  them!  and  the  Devil  take  thee! 
And  the  Devil  may  eat  up  the  dinner  for  me!» 

In  a  terrible  fume 
He  bounced  out  of  the  room, 
He  bounced  out  of  the  house  —  and  page,  footman,  and  groom 
Bounced  after  their  master;   for  scarce  had  they  heard 
Of  this  left-handed  grace  the  last  finishing  word. 
Ere  the  horn  at  the  gate  of  the  Barbican  tower 
Was  blown  with  a  loud  twenty-trumpeter  power, 


iei4  RICHARD   HARRIS   BARHAM 

And  in  rush'd  a  troop 
Of  strange  guests!  —  such  a  group 
As  had  ne'er  before  darkened  the  door  of  the  Scroope! 
This  looks  like  De  Saye  —  yet  —  it  is  not  De  Saye  — 
And  this  is  —  no,   'tis  not  —  Sir  Reginald  Braye, — 
This  has  somewhat  the  favor  of  Marmaduke  Grey  — 
But  stay !  —  Where  on  earth  did  he  get  those  long  nails  ? 
"Why,  they're  claws! — then  Good  Gracious!  —  they've  all  of  them  tails! 
That  can't  be  De  Vaux  —  why,  his  nose  is  a  bill, 
Or,  I  would  say  a  beak!  —  and  he  can't  keep  it  still!  — 
Is  that  Poynings  ? — Oh,   Gemini!  look  at  his  feet!  ! 
Why,  they're  absolute  hoofs!  —  is  it  gout  or  his  corns. 
That  have  crumpled  them  up  so?  —  by  Jingo,  he's  horns! 
Run!  run!  —  There's  Fitz-Walter,  Fitz-Hugh,  and  Fitz-John, 
And  the  Mandevilles,  pere  et  Jilz  (father  and  son), 
/ind  Fitz-Osbert,  and  Ufford  —  they've  all  got  them  on! 
Then  their  great  saucer  eyes  — 
It's  the  Father  of  lies 
And  his  Imps  —  run !  run !  run !  —  they're  all  fiends  in  disguise. 
Who've  partly  assumed,  with  more  sombre  complexions. 
The  forms  of  Sir  Guy  Le  Scroope's  friends  and  connections, 
And  He  —  at  the  top  there  —  that  grim-looking  elf  — 
Run!  run!  —  that's  the  <*  muckle-horned  Clootie**  himself! 

And  now  what  a  din 

Without  and  within! 
For  the  courtyard  is  full  of  them. —  How  they  begin 
To  mop,  and  to  mowe,  and  to  make  faces,  and  grin! 
Cock  their  tails  up  together, 
Like  cows  in  hot  weather. 
And  butt  at  each  other,  all  eating  and  drinking. 
The  viands  and  wine  disappearing  like  winking. 

And  then  such  a  lot 

As  together  had-  got! 
Master  Cabbage,  the  steward,  who'd  made  a  machine 
To  calculate  with,  and  count  noses, — I  ween 
The  cleverest  thing  of  the  kind  ever  seen,  — 
Declared,   when  he'd  made 
By  the  said  machine's  aid. 
Up,  what's  now  called  the  "  tottle  **  of  those  he  surveyed, 
There  were  just  —  how  he  proved  it  I  cannot  divine  — 
Nine  thousand,  nine  hundred,  and  ninety  and  nine. 

Exclusive  of  Him 

Who,  giant  in  limb, 


RICHARD   HARRIS  BARK  AM  1515 

And  black  as  the  crow  they  denominate  Jim, 
With  a  tail  like  a  bull,   and  a  head  like  a  bear, 
Stands  forth  at  the  window  —  and  what  holds  he  there. 

Which  he  hugs  with  such  care, 

And  pokes  out  in  the  air. 
And  grasps  as  its  limbs  from  each  other  he'd  teaT? 

Oh!  grief  and  despair! 

I  vow  and  declare 
It's  Le  Scroope's  poor,  dear,   sweet,  little,  curly-wigged  Heir! 
Whom  the  nurse  had  forgot  and  left  there  in  his  chair, 
Alternately  sucking  his  thumb  and  his  pear. 

What  words  can  express 
The  dismay  and  distress 
Of  Sir  Guy,  when  he  found  what  a  terrible  mess 
His  cursing  and  banning  had  now  got  him  into? 
That  words,  which  to  use  are  a  shame  and  a  sin  too, 
Had  thus  on  their  speaker  recoiled,  and  his  malison 
Placed  in. the  hands  of  the  Devil's  own  "paP*  his  son! — - 
He  sobbed  and  he  sighed, 
And  he  screamed,  and  he  cried, 
And  behaved  like  a  man  that  is  mad  or  in  liquor  —  he 
Tore  his  peaked  beard,  and  he  dashed  off  his  «Vicary,» 
Stamped  on  the  jasey 
As  though  he  were  crazy. 
And  staggering  about  just  as  if  he  were  <<hazy,'' 
Exclaimed,   ^<  Fifty  pounds !  >>  (a  large  sum  in  those  times^ 
«To  the  person,   whoever  he  may  be,   that  climbs 
To  that  window  above  there,   en  ogive,  and  painted. 
And  brings  down  my  curly-wi'  —  '*     Here  Sir  Guy  fainted! 

With  many  a  moan, 
And  many  a  groan, 
What  with  tweaks  of  the  nose,  and  some  eau  de  Cologne, 
He  revived, — Reason  once  more  remounted  her  throne, 
Or  rather  the  instinct  of  Nature  —  'twere  treason 
To  her,  in  the  Scroope's  case,  perhaps,  to  say  Reason — 
But  what  saw  he  then  —  Oh!  my  goodness!  a  sight 
Enough  to  have  banished  his  reason  outright!  — 

In  that  broad  banquet-hall 

The  fiends  one  and  all 
Regardless  of  shriek,  and  of  squeak,  and  of  squall. 
From  one  to  another  were  tossing  that  small 
Pretty,  curly-wigged  boy,  as  if  playing  at  ball; 


I^i6  RICHARD  HARRIS  BARHAM 

Yet  none  of  his  friends  or  his  vassals  might  dare 

To  fly  to  the  rescue  or  rush  up  the  stair, 

And  bring  down  in  safety  his  curly-wigged  Heir! 

Well  a  day!     Well  a  day! 
All  he  can  say 
Is  but  just  so  much  trouble  and  time  thrown  away; 
Not  a  man  can  be  tempted  to  join  the  mil^e : 
E'en  those  words  cabalistic,   '^  I  promise  to  pay 
Fifty  pounds  on  demand,  ^^  have  for  once  lost  their  sway, 
And  there  the  Knight  stands 
Wringing  his  hands 
In  his  agony  —  when  on  a  sudden,  one  ray 
Of  hope  darts  through  his  midriff!  —  His  Saint!  — 
Oh,   it's  funny 
And  almost  absurd. 
That  it  never  occurred!  — 
**Ay!  the  Scroope's  Patron  Saint!  —  he's  the  man  for  my  money! 
Saint  —  who  is  it?  —  really  I'm  sadly  to  blame, — 
On  my  word  I'm  afraid,  —  I  confess  it  with  shame, — 
That  I've  almost  forgot  the  good  Gentleman's  name, — 
Cut — let  me  see  —  Cutbeard  ? — no  —  Cuthbert!  —  egad! 
St.  Cuthbert  of  Bolton!  — I'm  right  — he's  the  lad! 
O  holy  St.  Cuthbert,  if  forbears  of  mine  — 
Of  myself  I  say  little  —  have  knelt  at  your  sUrine, 
And  have  lashed  their  bare  backs,  and  —  no  matter — with  twine, 
Oh !  list  to  the  vow 
Which  I  make  to  you  now, 
Only  snatch  my  poor  little  boy  out  of  the  row 
Which  that  Imp's  kicking  up  with  his  fiendish  bow-wow, 
And  his  head  like  a  bear,   and  his  tail  like  a  cow! 
Bring  him  back  here  in  safety!  —  perform  but  this  task. 
And   I'll  give  —  Oh!  —  I'll   give  you  whatever  yoii   ask!  — 
There  is  not  a  shrine 
In  the  county  shall  shine 
With  a  brilliancy  half  so  resplendent  as  thine. 
Or  have  so  many  candles,   or  look  half  so  fine!  — 
Kaste,  holy  St.  Cuthbert,  then, — hasten  in  pity!  —  ^* 

Conceive  his  surprise 

When  a  strange  voice  replies, 
"It's  a  bargain! — but,  mind,  sir.   The  best  Spermaceti !» — 
Say,   whose  that  voice? — whose  that  form   by  his  side. 
That  old,  old,  gray  man,  with  his  beard  long  and  wide, 


RICHARD   HARRIS  BARHAM  1517 

In  his  coarse  Palmer's  weeds, 

And  his  cockle  and  beads? — 
And  how  did  he  come  ?  —  did  he  walk?  — did  he  ride? 
Oh!  none  could  determine, —  oh!  none  could  decide, — 
The  fact  is,  I  don't  believe  any  one  tried; 
For  while  every  one  stared,  with  a  dignified  stride 

And  without  a  word  more, 
He  marched  on  before. 
Up  a  flight  of  stone  steps,  and  so  through  the  front  door, 
To  the  banqueting-hall  that  was  on  the  first  floor, 
While  the  fiendish  assembly  were  making  a  rare 
Little  shuttlecock  there  of  the  curly-wigged  Heir. 
—  I  wish,  gentle  Reader,   that  you  could  have  seen 
The  pause  that  ensued  when  he  stepped  in  between, 
With  his  resolute  air,  and  his  dignified  mien, 
And  said,   in  a  tone  most  decided  though  mild, 
<*Come!  I'll  trouble  you  just  to  hand  over  that  child!** 

The  Demoniac  crowd 

In  an  instant  seemed  cowed; 
Not  one  of  the  crew  volunteered  a  reply. 
All  shrunk  from  the  glance  of  that  keen-flashing  eye, 
Save  one  horrid  Humgruffin,  who  seemed  by  his  talk, 
And  the  airs  he  assumed,  to  be  cock  of  the  walk. 
He  quailed  not  before  it,   but  saucily  met  it. 
And  as  saucily  said,  << Don't  you  wish  you  may  get  it?** 

My  goodness!  —  the  look  that  the  old  Palmer  gave! 
And  his  frown!  —  'twas  quite  dreadful  to  witness  —  "Why,  slave! 

You  rascal !  **  quoth  he, 
"This  language  to  me! 
At  once,  Mr.  Nicholas!  down  on  your  knee, 
And  hand  me  that  curly-wigged  boy!— I  command  it  — 
Come!  —  none  of  your  nonsense!  —  you  know  I  won't  stand  it.**    " 

Old  Nicholas  trembled,  —  he  shook  in  his  shoes. 
And  seemed  half  inclined,  but  afraid,  to  refuse. 
«Well.  Cuthbert,**  said  he, 
"  If  so  it  must  be. 
For  you've  had  your  own  way  from  the  first  time  I  knew  ye;  — 
Take  your  curly-wigged  brat,   and  much  good  may  he  do  ye! 
But  I'll  have  in  exchange** — here  his  eye  flashed  with  rage  — 
"That  chap  with  the  buttons  —  he  gave  me  the  Page!** 

"Come,  come,**  the  saint  answered,  "you  very  well  know 
The  young  man's  no  more  his  than  your  own  to  bestow. 


I5i8 


RICHARD   HARRIS   BARHAM 


Touch  one  button  of  his  if  you  dare,  Nick  —  no!  no! 
Cut  your  stick,  sir  —  come,  mizzle!  be  off  with  you!  go!'^  — 

The  Devil  grew  hot  — 
«If  I  do  I'll  be  shot! 
An  you  come  to  that,  Cuthbert,  I'll  tell  you  what's  what; 
He  has  asked  us  to  dine  here,  and  go  we  will  not ! 
Why,  you  Skinflint, — at  least 
You  may  leave  us  the  feast! 
Here  we've  come  all  that  way  from  our  brimstone  abode, 
Ten  million  good  leagues,  sir,  as  ever  you  strode, 
And  the  deuce  of  a  luncheon  we've  had  on  the  road  — 
*Go!*  —  <  Mizzle!*  indeed  —  Mr.  Saint,  who  are  you, 
I  should  like  to  know?  —  <Go!*  I'll  be  hanged  if  I  do! 
He  invited  us  all  —  we've  a  right  here  —  it's  known 
That  a  Baron  may  do  what  he  likes  with  his  own  — 
Here,  Asmodeus  —  a  slice  of  that  beef;  —  now  the  mustard!- 
What  \iQNQ.  you  got?  —  oh,  apple-pie  —  try  it  with  custard.** 

The  Saint  made  a  pause 

As  uncertain,  because 
He  knew  Nick  is  pretty  well  "  up  **  in  the  laws. 
And  they  might  be  on  his  side  —  and  then,   he'd  such  claws! 
On  the  whole,  it  was  better,  he  thought,  to  retire 
With  the  curly-wigged  boy  he'd  picked  out  of  the  fire, 
And  give  up  the  victuals  —  to  retrace  his  path, 
And  to  compromise  —  (spite  of  the  Member  for  Bath). 

So  to  Old  Nick's  appeal. 

As  he  turned  on  his  heel. 
He  replied,  <<  Well,  I'll  leave  you  the  mutton  and  veal, 
And  the  soup  a  la  Reine,  and  the  sauce  Bechamel; 
As  the  'Scroope  did  invite  you  to  dinner,  I  feel 
I  can't  well  turn  you  out  —  'twould  be  hardly  genteel  — 
But  be  moderate,  pray, —  and  remember  thus  much, 
Since  you're  treated  as  Gentlemen  —  show  yourselves  such, 

And  don't  make  it  late, 

But  mind  and  go  straight 
Home  to  bed  when  you've  finished  —  and  don't  steal  the  plate. 
Nor  wrench  off  the  knocker,  or  bell  from  the  gate. 
Walk  away,  like  respectable  Devils,  in  peace. 
And  don't  Mark*  with  the  watch,  or  annoy  the  police!*^ 

Having  thus  said  his  say, 
That  Palmer  gray 
Took  up  little  La  Scroope,  and  walked  coolly  away. 
While  the  Demons  all  set  up  a  "Hip!  hip!  hurrah!** 


RICHARD   HARRIS  BARHAM  1 5 19 

Then  fell,  tooth  and  nail,  on  the  victuals,  as  they 
Had  been  guests  at  Guildhall  upon  Lord  Mayor's  day. 
All  scrambling  and  scuffling  for  what  was  before  'em, 
No  care  for  precedence  or  common  decorum. 

Few  ate  more  hearty 

Than  Madame  Astarte, 
And  Hecate,  —  considered  the  Belles  of  the  party. 
Between  them  was  seated  Leviathan,  eager 
To  "do  the  polite, ^^  and  take  wine  with  Belphegor; 
Here  was  Morbleu  (a  French  devil),  supping  soup-meagre, 
And  there,  munching  leeks,  Davy  Jones  of  Tredegar 
(A  Welsh  one),  who'd  left  the  domains  of  Ap  Morgan 
To  "follow  the  sea,** — and  next  him  Demogorgon, — 
Then  Pan  with  his  pipes,  and  Fauns  grinding  the  organ 
To  Mammon  and  Belial,  and  half  a  score  dancers. 
Who'd  joined  with  Medusa  to  get  up  Hhe  Lancers*; 
Here's  Lucifer  lying  blind  drunk  with  Scotch  ale, 
While  Beelzebub's  tying  huge  knots  in  his  tail. 
There's  Setebos,  storming  because  Mephistopheles 
Gave  him  the  lie, 
Said  he'd  "blacken  his  eye,* 
And  dashed  in  his  face  a  whole  cup  of  hot  coffee-lees;  — 
Ramping  and  roaring. 
Hiccoughing,   snoring. 
Never  was  seen  such  a  riot  before  in 
A  gentleman's  house,  or  such  profligate  reveling 
At  any  soiree — where  they  don't  let  the  Devil  in. 


Hark!  as  sure  as  fate 

The  clock's  striking  Eight! 
(An  hour  which  our  ancestors  called  "getting  late,'*'^ 
When  Nick,  who  by  this  time  was  rather  elate, 
Rose  up  and  addressed  them:  — 

"'Tis  full  time, »  he  said, 
"For  all  elderly  Devils  to  be  in  their  bed; 
For  my  own  part  I  mean  to  be  jogging,  because 
I  don't  find  myself  now  quite  so  young  as  I  was; 
But,  Gentlemen,  ere  I  depart  from  my  post 
I  must  call  on  you  all  for  one  bumper  —  the  toast 
Which  I  have  to  propose  is, —  Our  Excellent  Host! 
Many  thanks  for  his  kind  hospitality  —  may 
We  also  be  able 
To  see  at  our  table 


1520  RICHARD   HARRIS  BARHAM 

Himself,  and  enjoy,  in  a  family  way, 

His  good  company  down-stairs  at  no  distant  day! 

You'd,   I'm  sure,   think  me  rude 

If  I  did  not  include. 
In  the  toast  my  young  friend  there,  the  curly-wigged  Heir! 
He's  in  very  good  hands,  for  you're  all  well  aware 
That  St.   Cuthbert  has  taken  him  under  his  care; 

Though  I  must  not  say  ^  bless,  ^ — 
Why,  you'll  easily  guess, — 
May  our  curly-wigged  Friend's  shadow  never  be  less !  '* 
Nick  took  off  his  heel-taps  —  bowed  —  smiled  —  with  an  air 
Most  graciously  grim, — and  vacated  the  chair. 

Of  course  the  dite 
Rose  at  once  on  their  feet, 
And  followed  their  leader,  and  beat  a  retreat; 
When  a  sky-larking  Imp  took  the  President's  seat, 
And  requesting  that  each  would  replenish  his  cup, 
Said,  "Where  we  have  dined,  my  boys,  there  let  us  sup!*- 
It  was  three  in  the  morning  before  they  broke  up!!! 


I  scarcely  need  say 
Sir  Guy  didn't  delay 
To  fulfill  his  vow  made  to  St.  Cuthbert,  or  pay 
For  the  candles  he'd  promised,  or  make  light  as  day 
The  shrine  he  assured  him  he'd  render  so  gay. 
In  fact,  when  the  votaries  came  there  to  pray. 
All  said  there  was  naught  to  compare -with  it  —  nay, 

For  fear  that  the  Abbey 

Might  think  he  was  shabby. 
Four  Brethren,  thenceforward,  two  cleric,  two  lay, 
He  ordained  should  take  charge  of  a  new-founded  chantry, 
With  six  marcs  apiece,  and  some  claims  on  the  pantry; 

In  short,  the  whole  county 

Declared,  through  his  bounty, 
The  Abbey  of  Bolton  exhibited  fresh  scenes 
From  any  displayed  since  Sir  William  de  Meschines 
And  Cecily  Roumeli  came  to  this  nation 
With  William  the  Norman,  and  laid  its  foundation. 

For  the  rest,  it  is  said. 
And  I  know  I  have  read 
In  some  Chronicle  —  whose,  has  gone  out  of  my  head  — 


RICHARD   HARRIS   BARHAM  1 52 1 

That  what  with  these  candles,  and  other  expenses, 
Which  no  man  would  go  to  if  quite  in  his  senses, 
He  reduced  and  brought  low 
His  property  so, 
That  at  last  he'd  not  much  of  it  left  to  bestow; 
And  that  many  years  after  that  terrible  feast, 
Sir  Guy,  in  the  Abbey,   was  living  a  priest; 
And  there,  in  one  thousand  and  —  something  —  deceased. 

(It's  supposed  by  this  trick 

He  bamboozled  Old  Nick, 
And  slipped  through  his  fingers  remarkably  «  slick. ») 
While  as  to  young  Curly-wig, — dear  little  Soul, 
Would  you  know  more  of  him,  you  must  look  at  <<  The  Roll," 

Which  records  the  dispute, 

And  the  subsequent  suit. 
Commenced  in  "Thirteen  sev'nty-five,"  —  which  took  root 
In  Le  Grosvenor's  assuming  the  arms  Le  Scroope  swore 
That  none  but  his  ancestors,  ever  before. 
In  foray,  joust,  battle,  or  tournament  wore, 
To  wit,  "  On  a  Prussian-blue  Field,  a  Bend  Or;  >> 
While  the  Grosvenor  averred  that  his  ancestors  bore 
The  same,  and  Scroope  lied  like  a  —  somebody  tore 
OfE  the  simile, —  so  I  can  tell  you  no  more. 
Till  some  A  double  S  shall  the  fragment  restore. 

Moral 
This  Legend  sound  maxims  exemplifies  —  e.g. 

\mo.  Should  anything  tease  you. 

Annoy,  or  displease  you. 
Remember  what  Lilly  says,  ^^Animum  rege !  >* 
And  as  for  that  shocking  bad  habit  of  swearing, — 
In  all  good  society  voted  past  bearing, — 
Eschew  it!  and  leave  it  to  dustmen  and  mobs. 
Nor  commit  yourself  much  beyond  "  Zooks !  ^^  or  <*  Odsbobs !  *^ 

ido.     When  asked  out  to  dine  by  a  Person  of  Quality, 
Mind,  and  observe  the  most  strict  punctuality! 
For  should  you  come  late, 
And  make  dinner  wait. 
And  the  victuals  get  cold,  you'll  incur,  sure  as  fate. 
The  Master's  displeasure,  the  Mistress's  hate. 
And  though  both  may  perhaps  be  too  well-bred  to  swear. 

They'll  heartily  wish  you  —  I  will  not  say  Where. 
Ill — g6 


X522 


RICHARD   HARRIS   BARHAM 


itio.     Look  well  to  your  Maid-servants!  —  say  you  expect  them 
To  see  to  the  children,  and  not  to  neglect  them ! 
And  if  you're  a  widower,  just  throw  a  cursory 
Glance  in,  at  times,  when  you  go  near  the  Nursery. 
Perhaps  it's  as  well  to  keep  children  from  plums. 
And  from  pears  in  the  season, —  and  sucking  their  thumbs! 

i^o.     To  sum  up  the  whole  with  a  "  saw  *^  of  much  use, 
Be  jusi  and  be  generous, —  don't  ho,  prof  use  ! — 
Pay  the  debts  that  you  owe,  —  keep  your  word  to  your  friends, 

But  —  don't  SET   YOUR   CANDLES   ALIGHT   AT   BOTH   ENDS  ! !  — 

For  of  this  be  assured,  if  you  <<  go  it  **  too  fast, 

You'll  be  «  dished"  like  Sir  Guy, 

And  like  him,   perhaps,   die 
A  poor,  old,  half-starved  Country  Parson  at  last! 


A   LAY  OF   ST.   NICHOLAS 

«  Statim  sacerdoti  apparuit  diabolus  in  specie  puellse  pulchritudinis  mirae, 
et  ecce  Divus,  fide  catholica,  et  cruce,  et  aqua  benedicta  armatus  venit,  et 
aspersit  aquam  in  nomine  Sanctse  et  Individuae  Trinitatis,  quam,  quasi 
ardentem,   diabolus,   nequaqiiam   sustinere   valens,    mugitibus    fugit.»  —  Roger 

HOVEDEN. 

«T     ORD  Abbot!  Lord  Abbot!     Fd  fain  confess; 
I  ^  I  am  a-weary,  and  worn  with  woe ; 

Many  a  grief  doth  my  heart  oppress, 
And  haunt  me  whithersoever  I  go!* 

On  bended  knee  spake  the  beautiful  Maid; 

<<Now  lithe  and  listen,  Lord  Abbot,  to  me!*  — 
<<Now  naye,  fair  daughter,*  the  Lord  Abbot  said, 

"  Now  naye,  in  sooth  it  may  hardly  be, 

<<  There  is  Mess  Michael,  and  holy  Mess  John, 

Sage  penitauncers  I  ween  be  they ! 
And  hard  by  doth  dwell,  in  St.   Catherine's  cell, 

Ambrose,  the  anchorite  old  and  gray!* 

—  <'0h,  I  will  have  none  of  Ambrose  or  John, 
Tho^igh  sage  penitauncers  I  trow  they  be; 

Shrive  me  may  none  save  the  Abbot  alone  — 
Now  listen.   Lord  Abbot,  I  speak  to  thee. 

«Nor  think  foul  scorn,  though  mitre  adorn 
Thy  brow,  to  listen  to  shrift  of  mine! 


RICHARD  HARRIS  BARHAM  1523 

I  am  a  maiden  royally  born, 

And  I  come  of  old  Plantagenet's  line. 

«  Though  hither  I  stray  in  lowly  array, 

I  am  a  damsel  of  high  degree; 
And  the  Compte  of  Eu,  and  the  Lord  of  Ponthieu, 

They  serve  my  father  on  bended  knee! 

« Counts  a  many,  and  Dukes  a  few, 

A  suitoring  came  to  my  father's  Hall; 
But  the  Duke  of  Lorraine,  with  his  large  domain, 

He  pleased  my  father  beyond  them  all. 

«  Dukes  a  many,  and  Counts  a  few, 

I  would  have  wedded  right  cheerfullie; 
But  the  Duke  of  Lorraine  was  uncommonly  plain, 

And  I  vowed  that  he  ne'er  should  my  bridegroom  be! 

*So  hither  I  fly,  in  lowly  guise. 

From  their  gilded  domes  and  their  princely  halls; 
Fain  would  I  dwell  in  some  holy  cell, 

Or  within  some  Convent's  peaceful  walls ! " 

—  Then  out  and  spake  that  proud  Lord  Abbot, 
<*Now  rest  thee,  fair  daughter,  withouten  fear. 

Nor  Count  nor  Duke  but  shall  meet  the  rebuke 
Of  Holy  Church  an  he  seek  thee  here : 

<<  Holy  Church  denieth  all  search 

'Midst  her  sanctified  ewes  and  her  saintly  rams, 
And  the  wolves  doth  mock  who  would  scathe  her  flock, 

Or,  especially,  worry  her  little  pet  lambs. 

«  Then  lay,  fair  daughter,  thy  fears  aside. 

For  here  this  day  shalt  thou  dine  with  me!'^  — 
■  *<Now  naye,  now  naye,^^  the  fair  maiden  cried; 
*  In  sooth.  Lord  Abbot,  that  scarce  may  be ! 

<<  Friends  would  whisper,  and  foes  would  frown, 
Sith  thou  art  a  Churchman  of  high  degree, 

And  ill  mote  it  match  with  thy  fair  renown 
That  a  wandering  damsel  dine  with  thee ! 

"There  is  Simon  the  Deacon  hath  pulse  in  store. 

With  beans  and  lettuces  fair  to  see : 
His  lenten  fare  now  let  me  share, 

I  pray  thee.  Lord  Abbot,  in  charitie!'* 


1524 


RICHARD   HARRIS   BARHAM 

—  "Though  Simon  the  Deacon  hath  pulse  in  store. 
To  our  patron  Saint  foul  shame  it  were 

Should  wayworn  guest,  with  toil  oppressed, 
Meet  in  his  Abbey  such  churlish  fare. 

*  There  is  Peter  the  Prior,  and  Francis  the  Friar, 
And  Roger  the  Monk  shall  our  convives  be ; 

Small  scandal  I  ween  shall  then  be  seen : 
They  are  a  goodly  companie !  *> 

The  Abbot  hath  donned  his  mitre  and  ring, 

His  rich  dalmatic,  and  maniple  fine; 
And  the  choristers  sing,  as  the  lay-brothers  bring 

To  the  board  a  magnificent  turkey  and  chine. 

The  turkey  and  chine,  they  are  done  to  a  nicety; 

Liver,  and  gizzard,  and  all  are  there ; 
Ne'er  mote  Lord  Abbot  pronounce  Benedicite 

Over  more  luscious  or  delicate  fare. 

But  no  pious  stave  he,  no  Pater  or  Ave 

Pronounced,  as  he  gazed  on  that  maiden's  face; 

She  asked  him  for  stuffing,  she  asked  him  for  gravy, 
She  asked  him  for  gizzard ;  —  but  not  for  grace ! 

Yet  gayly  the  Lord  Abbot  smiled,  and  pressed. 
And  the  blood-red  wine  in  the  wine-cup  filled; 

And  he  helped  his  guest  to  a  bit  of  the  breast, 
And  he  sent  the  drumsticks  down  to  be  grilled. 

There  was  no  lack  of  the  old  Sherris  sack. 
Of  Hippocras  fine,  or  of  Malmsey  bright; 

And  aye,  as  he  drained  off  his  cup  with  a  smack. 
He  grew  less  pious  and  more  polite. 

She  pledged  him  once,  and  she  pledged  him  twice. 
And  she  drank  as  Lady  ought  not  to  drink; 

And  he  pressed  her  hand  'neath  the  table  thrice. 
And  he  winked  as  Abbot  ought  not  to  wink. 

And  Peter  the  Prior,  and  Francis  the  Friar, 
Sat  each  with  a  napkin  under  his  chin; 

But  Roger  the  Monk  got  excessively  drunk. 

So  they  put  him  to  bed,  and  they  tucked  him  in  I 

The  lay-brothers  gazed  on  each  other,  amazed; 
And  Simon  the  Deacon,  with  grief  and  surprise, 


RICHARD   HARRIS   BARHAM 


1525 


As  he  peeped  through  the  key-hole,  could  scarce  fancy  real 
The  scene  he  beheld,  or  believe  his  own  eyes. 

In  his  ear  was  ringing  the  Lord  Abbot  singing  — 

He  could  not  distinguish  the  words  very  plain. 
But  'twas  all  about  «Cole,»  and  « jolly  old  Soul,"  [fkne. 

And  "  Fiddlers, "  and  <*  Punch,  *>  and  things  quite  as  pro- 
Even  Porter  Paul,  at  the  sound  of  such  reveling, 

With  fervor  himself  began  to  bless; 
For  he  thought  he  must  somehow  have  let  the  Devil  in  — 

And  perhaps  was  not  very  much  out  in  his  guess. 

The  Accusing  Byers*  "flew  up  to  Heaven's  Chancery," 
Blushing  like  scarlet  with  shame  and  concern; 

The  Archangel  took  down  his  tale,  and  in  answer  he 
Wept  (see  the  works  of  the  late  Mr.   Sterne). 

Indeed,  it  is  said,  a  less  taking  both  were  in 
When,  after  a  lapse  of  a  great  many  years. 

They  booked  Uncle  Toby  five  shillings  for  swearing, 
And  blotted  the  fine  out  again  with  their  tears! 

But  St.  Nicholas's  agony  who  may  paint  ? 

His  senses  at  first  were  well-nigh  gone ; 
The  beatified  saint  was  ready  to  faint 

When  he  saw  in  his  Abbey  such  sad  goings  on ! 

For  never,  I  ween,  had  such  doings  been  seen 

There  before,  from  the  time  that  most  excellent  Prince, 

Earl  Baldwin  of  Flanders,  and  other  Commanders, 
Had  built  and  endowed  it  some  centuries  since. 

—  But  hark  — 'tis  a  sound  from  the  outermost  gate : 
A  startling  sound  from  a  powerful  blow. — 

Who  knocks  so  late?  —  it  is  half  after  eight 

By  the  clock, — and  the  clock's  five  minutes  too  slow. 

•  Never,  perhaps,  had  such  loud  double  raps 

Been  heard  in  St.  Nicholas's  Abbey  before ; 
All  agreed  "it  was  shocking  to  keep  people  knocking," 
But  none  seemed  inclined  to  "answer  the  door." 

Now  a  louder  bang  through  the  cloisters  rang, 
And  the  gate  on  its  hinges  wide  open  flew; 

*The    Prince    of    Peripatetic    Informers,    and    terror    of   Stage    Coachmen, 
when  such  things  were. 


1526  RICHARD   HARRIS  BARHAM 

And  all  were  aware  of  a  Palmer  there, 

With  his  cockle,  hat,  staff,  and  his  sandal  shoe. 

Many  a  furrow,  and  many  a  frown, 

By  toil  and  time  on  his  brow  were  traced; 

And  his  long  loose  gown  was  of  ginger  brown, 
And  his  rosary  dangled  below  his  waist. 

Now  seldom,  I  ween,  is  such  costume  seen. 
Except  at  a  stage-play  or  masquerade; 

But  who  doth  not  know  it  was  rather  the  go 

With  Pilgrims  and  Saints  in  the  second  Crusade  ? 

With  noiseless  stride  did  that  Palmer  glide 

Across  that  oaken  floor; 
And  he  made  them  all  jump,  he  gave  such  a  thump 

Against  the  Refectory  door! 

Wide  open  it  flew,  and  plain  to  the  view 
The  Lord  Abbot  they  all  mote  see; 

In  his  hand  was  a  cup  and  he  lifted  it  up, 

*<  Here's  the  Pope's  good  health  with  three !  * 

Rang  in  their  ears  three  deafening  cheers, 

« Huzza!  huzza!  huzza !'^ 
And  one  of  the  party  said,  <^  Go  it,  my  hearty !» — 

When  outspake  that  Pilgrim  gray  — 

<<A  boon,  Lord  Abbot!  a  boon!  a  boon! 

Worn  is  my  foot,   and  empty  my  scrip; 
And  nothing  to  speak  of  since  yesterday  noon 

Of  food.   Lord  Abbot,  hath  passed  my  lip. 

<<And  I  am  come  from  a  far  countree. 
And  have  visited  many  a  holy  shrine; 

And  long  have  I  trod  the  sacred  sod 

Where  the  Saints  do  rest  in  Palestine !  *^  — 

«An  thou  art  come  from  a  far  countree, 
And  if  thou  in  Paynim  lands  hast  been. 

Now  rede  me  aright  the  most  wonderful  sight. 
Thou  Palmer  gray,  that  thine  eyes  have  seen. 

<*Arede  me  aright  the  most  wonderful  sight. 
Gray  Palmer,  that  ever  thine  eyes  did  see, 

And  a  manchette  of  bread,  and  a  good  warm  bed, 
And  a  cup  o'  the  best  shall  thy  guerdon  be!* 


RICHARD   HARRIS  BARHAM  1527 

«0h!   I  have  been  east,  and  I  have  been  west, 
And  I  have  seen  many  a  wonderful  sight; 

But  never  to  me  did  it  happen  to  see 

A  wonder  like  that  which  I  see  this  night! 

«To  see  a  Lord  Abbot,  in  rochet  and  stole, 

With  Prior  and  Friar, — a  strange  mar-velle!  — 

O'er  a  jolly  full  bowl,  sitting  cheek  by  jowl, 

And  hob-nobbing  away  with  a  Devil  from  Hell!^* 

He  felt  in  his  gown  of  ginger  brown. 

And  he  pulled  out  a  flask  from  beneath; 
It  was  rather  tough  work  to  get  out  the  cork. 

But  he  drew  it  at  last  with  his  teeth. 

O'er  a  pint  and  a  quarter  of  holy  water, 

He  made  a  sacred  sign; 
And  he  dashed  the  whole  on  the  soi-disatit  daughter 

Of  old  Plantagenet's  line! 

Oh!  then  did  she  reek,  and  squeak,  and  shriek, 

With  a  wild  unearthly  scream; 
And  fizzled,  and  hissed,  and  produced  such  a  mist, 

They  were  all  half-choked  by  the  steam. 

Her  dove-like  eyes  turned  to  coals  of  fire. 

Her  beautiful  nose  to  a  horrible  snout. 
Her  hands  to  paws,   with  nasty  great  claws, 

And  her  bosom  went  in  and  her  tail  came  out. 

On  her  chin  there  appeared  a  long  Nanny-goat's  beard. 
And  her  tusks  and  her  teeth  no  man  mote  tell ; 

And  her  horns  and  her  hoofs  gave  infallible  proofs 
'Twas  a  frightful  Fiend  from  the  nethermost  hell! 

The  Palmer  threw  down  his  ginger  gown. 

His  hat  and  his  cockle;   and,  plain  to  sight. 

Stood  St.  Nicholas'  self,  and  his  shaven  crown 
Had  a  glow-worm  halo  of  heavenly  light. 

The  fiend  made  a  grasp  the  Abbot  to  clasp; 

But  St.  Nicholas  lifted  his  holy  toe. 
And,  just  in  the  nick,  let  fly  such  a  kick 

On  his  elderly  namesake,  he  made  him  let  go. 

And  out  of  the  window  he  flew  like  a  shot. 
For  the  foot  flew  up  with  a  terrible  thwack. 


1528  RICHARD   HARRIS    BARHAM 

And  caught  the  foul  demon  about  the  spot 

Where  his  tail  joins  on  to  the  small  of  his  back. 

And  he  bounded  away  like  a  foot-ball  at  play, 
Till  into  the  bottomless  pit  he  fell  slap, 

Knocking  Mammon  the  meagre  o'er  pursy  Belphegor, 
And  Lucifer  into  Beelzebub's  lap. 

Oh!   happy  the  slip  from  his  Succubine  grip. 

That    saved    the    Lord    Abbot, — though    breathless    with 
fright, 

In  escaping  he  tumbled,  and  fractured  his  hip. 

And  his  left  leg  was  shorter  thenceforth  than  his  right! 


On  the  banks  of  the  Rhine,  as  he's  stopping  to  dine, 
From  a  certain  inn-window  the  traveler  is  shown 

Most  picturesque  ruins,   the  scene  of  these  doings, 
Some  miles  up  the  river  south-east  of  Cologne. 

And  while    ^'^  sauer-krauP^   she   sells   you,  the   landlady   tells 
you 

That  there,   in  those  walls  all  roofless  and  bare, 
One  Simon,  a  Deacon,  from  a  lean  grew  a  sleek  one 

On  filling  a  ci-dcvant  Abbot's  state  chair. 

How  a  ci-devant  Abbot,   all  clothed  in  drab,   but 
Of  texture  the  coarsest,   hair  shirt  and  no  shoes 

(His  mitre  and  ring,   and  all  that  sort  of  thing 
Laid  aside),  in  yon  cave  lived  a  pious  recluse; 

How  he  rose  with  the  sun,  limping  *^dot  and  go  one,>> 
To  yon  rill  of  the  movmtain,  in  all  sorts  of  weather, 

Where  a  Prior  and  a  Friar,  who  lived  somewhat  higher 
Up  the  rock,   used  to  come  and  eat  cresses  together; 

How  a  thirsty  old  codger    the  neighbors  called  Roger, 
With  them  drank  cold  water  in  lieu  of  old  wine ! 

What  its  quality  wanted  he  made  up  in  quantity, 
Swigging  as  though  he  would  empty  the  Rhine! 

And  how,  as  their  bodily  strength  failed,  the  mental  man 
Gained  tenfold  vigor  and  force  in  all  four; 

And  how,  to  the  day  of  their  death,  the  "Old  Gentleman'* 
Never  attempted  to  kidnap  them  more. 


SABINE   BARING-GOULD  1529 

And  how,  when  at  length,  in  the  odor  of  sanctity, 
All  of  them  died  without  grief  or  complaint, 

The  monks  of  St.   Nicholas  said  'twas  ridiculous 
Not  to  suppose  every  one  was  a  Saint. 

And  how,  in  the  Abbey,  no  one  was  so  shabby 

As  not  to  say  yearly  four  masses  ahead, 
On  the  eve  of  that  supper,   and  kick  on  the  crupper 

Which  Satan  received,  for  the  souls  of  the  dead! 

How  folks  long  held  in  reverence  their  reliques  and  mem- 
ories, 

How  the  ci-devant  Abbot's  obtained  greater  still, 
When  some  cripples,  on  touching  his  fractured  os  femoris. 

Threw  down  their  crutches  and  danced  a  quadrille ! 

And  how  Abbot  Simon  (who  turned  out  a  prime  one) 
These  words,  which  grew  into  a  proverb  full  soon. 

O'er  the  late  Abbot's  grotto,   stuck  t:p  as  a  motto, 
«  J©t)o  .;^uppei5  tuith  tfte  ©cliinc  jsbolbc  fjaVic  a  long  ispoone  I » 


SABINE   BARING-GOULD 

(1834-1906) 

)he  Rev.  Sabine  Baring-Gould  was  born  in  Exeter,  England,  in 
1834.  The  addition  of  Gould  to  the  name  of  Baring  came 
in  the  time  of  his  great-grandfather,  a  brother  of  Sir 
Francis  Baring,  who  married  an  only  daughter  and  heiress  of  W.  D. 
Gould  of  Devonshire.  Much  of  the  early  life  of  Baring-Gould  was 
passed  in  Germany  and  France,  and  at  Clare  College,  Cambridge, 
where  he  graduated  in  1854,  taking  orders  ten  years  later,  and  in 
1 88 1  becoming  rector  of  Lew  Trenchard,  Devonshire,  where  he  holds 
estates  and  privileges  belonging  to  his  family. 

He  has  worked  in  many  fields,  and  in  all  with  so  much  accept- 
ance that  a  list  of  his  books  would  be  the  best  exposition  of  the 
range  of  his  untiring  pen.  To  a  gift  of  ready  words  and  ready 
illustration,  whether  he  concerns  himself  with  diversities  of  early 
Christian  belief,  the  course  of  country-dances  in  England,  or  the 
growth  of  mediaeval  legends,  he  adds  the  grace  of  telling  a  tale  and 
drawing  a  character.  He  has  published  nearly  a  hundred  volumes, 
not  one  of  them  unreadable.  But  no  one  man  may  write  with  equal 
pen  of  German  history,  of  comparative  mythology  and  philology,  of 


^^30  SABINE   BARING-GOULD 

theological  dissertations,  and   of  the   pleasures  of  English  rural   life, 
while  he  adds  to  these  a  long  list  of  novels. 

His  secret  of  popularity  lies  not  in  his  treatment,  which  is  neither 
critical  nor  scientific,  but  rather  in  a  clever,  easy,  dilfuse,  jovial, 
amusing  way  of  saying  clearly  what  at  the  moment  comes  to  him  to 
say.  His  books  have  a  certain  raciness  and  spirit  that  recall  the 
English  squire  of  tradition.  They  rarely  smell  of  the  lamp.  Now 
and  then  appears  a  strain  of  sturdy  scholarship,  leading  the  reader 
to  wonder  what  his  author  might  have  accomplished  had  he  not 
enjoyed  the  comfortable  ease  of  a  country  justice  of  the  peace,  and 
a  rector  with  large  landed  estates,  to  whom  his  poorer  neighbors 
appear  a  sort  of  dancing  puppets. 

Between  1857  and  1870,  Baring-Gould  had  published  nine  volumes, 
the  best  known  of  these  being  <  Curious  Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages.' 
From  1870  to  1890  his  name  appeared  as  author  on  the  title-page 
of  forty-three  books:  sermons,  lectures,  essays,  archaeological  treatises, 
memoirs,  curiosities  of  literature,  histories,  and  fiction;  sixteen  novels, 
tales,  and  romances  being  included.  From  1890  to  1896  he  published 
seventeen  more  novels,  and  many  of  his  books  have  passed  through 
several  editions.  His  most  successful  novels  are  *■  Mehalah ;  a  Tale  of 
the  Salt  Marshes, >  ^  In  the  Roar  of  the  Sea,>  <  Red  Spider,'  <  Richard 
Cable,*  and  <Noemi;    a  Story  of  Rock-Dwellers.* 

In  an  essay  upon  his  fiction,  Mr.  J.  M.  Barrie  writes  in  The  Con- 
temporary Review  (February,   1890):  — 

« Of  our  eight  or  ten  living  novelists  who  are  popular  by  merit,  few  have 
greater  ability  than  Mr.  Baring-Gould.  His  characters  are  bold  and  forcible 
figures,  his  wit  is  as  ready  as  his  figures  of  speech  are  apt.  He  has  a  power- 
ful imagination,  and  is  quaintly  fanciful.  When  he  describes  a  storm,  we  can 
see  his  trees  breaking  in  the  gale.  So  enormous  and  accurate  is  his  general 
information  that  there  is  no  trade  or  profession  with  which  he  does  not  seem 
familiar.  So  far  as  scientific  knowledge  is  concerned,  he  is  obviously  better 
equipped  than  any  contemporary  writer  of  fiction.  Yet  one  rises  from  his 
books  with  a  feeling  of  repulsion,  or  at  least  with  the  glad  conviction  that 
his  ignoble  views  of  life  are  as  untrue  as  the  characters  who  illustrate  them. 
Here  is  a  melancholy  case  of  a  novelist,  not  only  clever  but  sincere,  undone 
by  want  of  sympathy.  .  .  .  The  author's  want  of  sympathy  prevents 
<Mehalah's>  rising  to  the  highest  art;  for  though  we  shudder  at  the  end, 
there  the  effect  of  the  story  stops.  It  illustrates  the  futility  of  battling  with 
fate,  but  the  theme  is  not  allowable  to  ^\Titers  with  the  modern  notion  of  a 
Supreme  Power.  .  .  .  But  < Mehalah*  is  still  one  of  the  most  powerful 
romances  of  recent  years.** 


SABINE  BARING-GOULD  I^^r 

ST.  PATRICK'S   PURGATORY 
From  <  Curious  Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages 

IN  THAT  charming  mediaeval  romance  ^  Fortunatus  and  his  Sons,* 
which    by  the    way  is   a   treasury  of  popular  mythology,   is  an 

account  of  a  visit  paid  by  the  favored  youth  to  that  cave  of 
mystery  in  Lough  Derg,   the  Purgatory  of   St.   Patrick. 

Fortunatus,  we  are  told,  had  heard  in  his  travels  of  how  two 
days'  journey  from  the  town  Valdric,  in  Ireland,  was  a  town, 
Vernic,  where  was  the  entrance  to  the  Purgatory;  so  thither  he 
went  with  many  servants.  He  found  a  great  abbey,  and  behind 
the  altar  of  the  church  a  door,  which  led  into  the  dark  cave 
which  is  called  the  Purgatory  of  St.  Patrick.  In  order  to  enter 
it,  leave  had  to  be  obtained  from  the  abbot;  consequently  Leo- 
pold, servant  to  Fortunatu's,  betook  himself  to  that  worthy  and 
made  known  to  him  that  a  nobleman  from  Cyprus  desired  to 
enter  the  mysterious  cavern.  The  abbot  at  once  requested  Leo- 
pold to  bring  his  master  to  supper  with  him.  Fortunatus  bought 
a  large  jar  of  wine  and  sent  it  as  a  present  to  the  monastery, 
and  followed  at  the  meal-time. 

"  Venerable  sir !  ^^  said  Fortunatus,  *^  I  understand  the  Purga- 
tory of  St.   Patrick  is  here :  is  it  so  ?  ^* 

The  abbot  replied,  ^*  It  is  so  indeed.  Many  hundred  years 
ago,  this  place,  where  stand  the  abbey  and  the  town,  was  a 
howling  wilderness.  Not  far  off,  however,  lived  a  venerable 
hermit,  Patrick  by  name,  who  often  sought  the  desert  for  the 
purpose  of  therein  exercising  his  austerities.  One  day  he  lighted 
on  this  cave,  which  is  of  vast  extent.  He  entered  it,  and  wan- 
dering on  in  the  dark,  lost  his  way,  so  that  he  could  no  more 
find  how  to  return  to  the  light  of  day.  After  long  ramblings 
through  the  gloomy  passages,  he  fell  on  his  knees  and  besought 
Almighty  God,  if  it  were  His  will,  to  deliver  him  from  the  great 
peril  wherein  he  lay.  Whilst  Patrick  thus  prayed,  he  was  ware 
of  piteous  cries  issuing  from  the  depths  of  the  cave,  just  such  as 
would  be  the  wailings  of  souls  in  purgatory.  The  hermit  rose 
from  his  orison,  and  by  God's  mercy  found  his  way  back  to  the 
surface,  and  from  that  day  exercised  greater  austerities,  and  after 
his  death  he  was  numbered  with  the  saints.  Pious  people,  who 
had  heard  the  story  of  Patrick's  adventure  in  the  cave,  built  this 
cloister  on  the  site.'* 


^^32  SABINE   BARING-GOULD 

Then  Fortunatus  asked  whether  all  who  ventured  into  the 
place  heard  likewise  the  howls  of  the  tormented  souls. 

The  abbot  replied,  "  Some  have  affirmed  that  they  have  heard 
a  bitter  crying  and  piping  therein;  whilst  others  have  heard  and 
seen  nothing.  No  one,  however,  has  penetrated  as  yet  to  the 
furthest  limits  of  the  cavern.*^ 

Fortunatus  then  asked  permission  to  enter,  and  the  abbot 
cheerfully  consented,  only  stipulating  that  his  guest  should  keep 
near  the  entrance  and  not  ramble  too  far,  as  some  who  had 
ventured  in  had  never  returned. 

Next  day  early,  Fortunatus  received  the  Blessed  Sacrament 
with  his  trusty  Leopold;  the  door  of  the  Purgatory  was  unlocked, 
each  was  provided  with  a  taper,  and  then  with  the  blessing  of 
the  abbot  they  were  left  in  total  darkness,  and  the  door  bolted 
behind  them.  Both  wandered  on  in  the  cave,  hearing  faintly  the 
chanting  of  the  monks  in  the  church,-  till  the  sound  died  away. 
They  traversed  several  passages,  lost  their  way,  their  candles 
burned  out,  and  they  sat  down  in  despair  on  the  ground,  a  prey 
to  hunger,  thirst,  and  fear. 

The  monks  waited  in  the  church  hour  after  hour;  and  the 
visitors  of  the  Purgatory  had  not  returned.  Day  declined,  ves' 
pers  were  sung,  and  still  there  was  no  sign  of  the  two  who  in 
the  morning  had  passed  from  the  church  into  the  cave.  Then 
the  servants  of  Fortunatus  began  to  exhibit  anger,  and  to  insist 
on  their  master  being  restored  to  them.  The  abbot  was  fright- 
ened, and  sent  for  an  old  man  who  had  once  penetrated  far 
into  the  cave  with  a  ball  of  twine,  the  end  attached  to  the  door- 
handle. This  man  volunteered  to  seek  Fortunatus,  and  provi- 
dentially his  search  was  successful.  After  this  the  abbot  refused 
permission  to  any  one  to  visit  the  cave. 

In  the  reign  of  Henry  II.  lived  Henry  of  Saltrey,  who  wrote 
a  history  of  the  visit  of  a  Knight  Owen  to  the  Purgatory  of  St. 
Patrick,  which  gained  immense  popularity,  .  .  .  was  soon  trans- 
lated into  other  languages,  and  spread  the  fable  through  mediaeval 
Europe.  ...  In  P^nglish  there  are  two  versions.  In  one 
of  these,  *  Owayne  Miles,  ^  the  origin  of  the  purgatory  is  thus 
described :  — 

"Holy  byschoppes  some  tyme  ther  were, 
That  tawgte  me  of  Goddes  lore. 
In  Irlonde  preched  Seyn  Patryke ; 
In  that  londe  was  non  hym  lyke: 


SABINE   BARING-GOULD  1 533 

He  prechede  Goddes  worde  full  wyde, 

And  tolde  men  what  shullde  betyde. 

Fyrste  he  preched  of  Heven  blysse, 

Who  ever  go  thyder  may  ryght  nowgt  mysse: 

Sethen  he  preched  of  Hell  pyne, 

Howe  wo  them  ys  that  cometh  therinne: 

And  then  he  preched  of  purgatory, 

As  he  fonde  in  hisstory; 

But  yet  the  folke  of  the  contre 

Beleved  not  that  hit  mygth  be ; 

And  seyed,  but  gyf  hit  were  so, 

That  eny  non  myth  hymself  go, 

And  se  alle  that,  and  come  ageyn, 

Then  wolde  they  beleve  fayn.>> 

Vexed  at  the  obstinacy  of  his  hearers,  St.  Patrick  besoug-ht 
the  Almighty  to  make  the  truth  manifest  to  the  unbelievers; 
whereupon 

*'  God  spakke  to  Saynt  Patryke  tho 
By  nam,  and  badde  hym  with  Hym  go: 
He  ladde  hym  ynte  a  wyldernesse, 
Wher  was  no  reste  more  no  lesse, 
And  shewed  that  he  might  se 
Inte  the  erthe  a  pryve  entre: 
Hit  was  yn  a  depe  dyches  ende. 
<What  mon,^  He  sayde,    Hhat  wylle  hereyn  wende, 
And  dwelle  theryn  a  day  and  a  nyght, 
And  hold  his  byleve  and  ryght, 
And  come  ageyn  that  he  ne  dwelle, 
Mony  a  mervayle  he  may  of  telle. 
And  alle  tho  that  doth  thys  pylgrymage, 
I  shalle  hem  graunt  for  her  wage. 
Whether  he  be  sqwyer  or  knave. 
Other  purgatorye  shalle  he  non  have.*'* 

Thereupon  St.  Patrick,  "he  ne  stynte  ner  day  ne  night,**  till 
he  had  built  there  a  "fayr  abbey,**  and  stocked  it  with  pious 
canons.  Then  he  made  a  door  to  the  cave,  and  locked  the  door, 
and  gave  the  key  to  the  keeping  of  the  prior.  The  Knight 
Owain,  who  had  served  under  King  Stephen,  had  lived  a  life 
of  violence  and  dissolution;  but  filled  with  repentance,  he  sought 
by  way  of  penance  St.  Patrick's  Purgatory.  Fifteen  days  he 
spent  in  preliminary  devotions  and  alms-deeds,  and  then  he 
heard   mass,    was    washed    with    holy   water,    received    the    Holy 


jc-^  SABINE   BARING-GOULD 

Sacrament,  and  followed  the  sacred  relics  in  procession,  whilst 
the  priests  sang  for  him  the  Litany,  "as  lowde  as  they  mygth 
crye."  Then  Sir  Owain  was  locked  in  the  cave,  and  he  groped 
his  way  onward  in  darkness,  till  he  reached  a  glimmering  light; 
this  brightened,  and  he  came  out  into  an  underground  land, 
where  was  a  great  hall  and  cloister,  in  which  were  men  with 
shaven  heads  and  white  garments.  These  men  informed  the 
knight  how  he  was  to  protect  himself  against  the  assaults  of 
evil  spirits.  After  having  received  this  instruction,  he  heard 
"grete  dynn,**  and 

<*  Then  come  ther  develes  on  every  syde, 
Wykked  gostes,  I  wote,  fro  Helle, 
So  mony  that  no  tonge  mygte  telle: 
They  fylled  the  hows  yn  two  rowes; 
Some  grenned  on  hym  and  some  mad  mowes.*^ 

He  then  visits  the  different  places  of  torment.  In  one,  the 
souls  are  nailed  to  the  ground  with  glowing  hot  brazen  nails;  in 
another  they  are  fastened  to  the  soil  by  their  hair,  and  are 
bitten  by  fiery  reptiles.  In  another,  again,  they  are  hung  over 
fires  by  those  members  which  had  sinned,  whilst  others  are 
roasted  on  spits.  In  one  place  were  pits  in  which  were  molten 
metals.  In  these  pits  were  men  and  women,  some  up  to  theif 
chins,  others  to  their  breasts,  others  to  their  hams.  The  knight 
was  pushed  by  the  devils  into  one  of  these  pits  and  was  dread- 
fully scalded,  but  he  cried  to  the  Savior  and  escaped.  Then 
he  visited  a  lake  where  souls  were  tormented  with  great  cold; 
and  a  river  of  pitch,  which  he  crossed  on  a  frail  and  narrow 
bridge.  Beyond  this  bridge  was  a  wall  of  glass,  in  which  opened 
a  beautiful  gate,  which  conducted  into  Paradise.  This  place  so 
delighted  him  that  he  would  fain  have  remained  in  it  had  he 
been  suffered,  but  he  was  bidden  return  to  earth  and  finish 
there  his  penitence.  He  was  put  into  a  shorter  and  pleasanter 
way  back  to  the  cave  than  that  by  which  he  had  come;  and  the 
prior  found  the  knight  next  morning  at  the  door,  waiting  to  be 
let  out,  and  full  of  his  adventures.  He  afterwards  went  on  a 
pilgrimage  to  the  Holy  Land,  and  ended  his  life  in  piety.     .     .     . 

Froissart  tells  us  of  a  conversation  he  had  with  one  Sir  Will- 
iam Lisle,  who  had  been  in  the  Purgatory.  "  I  asked  him  of 
what  sort  was  the  cave  that  is  in  Ireland,  called  St.  Patrick's 
Purgatory,  and   if   that   were   true   which   was  related  of   it.     He 


SABINE   BARING-GOULD 


1535 


replied  that  there  certainly  was  such  a  cave,  for  he  and  another 
English  knight  had  been  there  whilst  the  king  was  at  Dublin, 
and  said  that  they  entered  the  cave,  and  were  shut  in  as  the 
sun  set,  and  that  they  remained  there  all  night  and  left  it  next 
morning  at  sunrise.  And  then  I  asked  if  he  had  seen  the 
strange  sights  and  visions  spoken  of.  Then  he  said  that  when 
he  and  his  companion  had  passed  the  gate  of  the  Purgatory  of 
St.  Patrick,  that  they  had  descended  as  though  into  a  cellar, 
and  that  a  hot  vapor  rose  towards  them  and  so  affected  their 
heads  that  they  were  obliged  to  sit  down  on  the  stone  steps. 
And  after  sitting  there  awhile  they  felt  heavy  with  sleep,  and 
so  fell  asleep,  and  slept  all  night.  Then  I  asked  if  they  knew 
where  they  were  in  their  sleep,  and  what  sort  of  dreams  they 
had  had;  he  answered  that  they  had  been  oppressed  with  many 
fancies  and  wonderful  dreams,  different  from  those  they  were 
accustomed  to  in  their  chambers;  and  in  the  morning  when  they 
went  out,  in  a  short  while  they  had  clean  forgotten  their  dreams 
and  visions;  wherefore  he  concluded  that  the  whole  matter  was 
fancy.  ^* 

The  next  to  give  us  an  account  of  his  descent  into  St.  Pat- 
rick's Purgatory  is  William  Staunton  of  Durham,  who  went  down 
into  the  cave  on  the  Friday  next  after  the  feast  of  Holyrood,  in 
the  year  1409. 

"  I  was  put  in  by  the  Prior  of  St.  Matthew,  of  the  same  Pur- 
gatory, with  procession  and  devout  prayers  of  the  prior,  and  the 
convent  gave  me  an  orison  to  bless  me  with,  and  to  write  the 
first  word  in  my  forehead,  the  which  prayer  is  this,  ^Jhesu 
Christe,  Fili  Dei  vivi,  miserere  mihi  peccatori.^  And  the  prior 
taught  me  to  say  this  prayer  when  any  spirit,  good  or  evil,  ap- 
peared unto  me,  or  when  I  heard  any  noise  that  I  should  be 
afraid  of.*^  When  left  in  the  cave,  William  fell  asleep,  and 
dreamed  that  he  saw  coming  to  him  St.  John  of  Bridlington 
and  St.  Ive,  who  undertook  to  conduct  him  through  the  scenes 
of  mystery.  After  they  had  proceeded  a  while,  William  was 
found  to  be  guilty  of  a  trespass  against  Holy  Church,  of  which 
he  had  to  be  purged  before  he  could  proceed  much  further.  Of 
this  trespass  he  was  accused  by  his  sister,  who  appeared  in  the 
way.  *^  I  make  my  complaint  unto  you  against  my  brother  that 
here  standeth;  for  this  man  that  standeth  hereby  loved  me,  and 
I  loved  him,  and  either  of  us  would  have  had  the  other  accord- 
ing  to   God's  law,  as   Holy   Church   teaches,  and   I   should  have 


IS36 


SABINE    BARING-GOULD 


gotten  of  me  three  souls  to  God,  but  my  brother  hindered  us 
from  marrj'ing^.  ^*  St.  John  of  Bridlington  then  turned  to  Will- 
iam, and  asked  him  why  he  did  not  allow  the  two  who  loved 
one  another  to  be  married.  "  I  tell  thee  there  is  no  man  that 
hindcrcth  man  or  woman  from  being  united  in  the  bond  of  God, 
though  the  man  be  a  shepherd  and  all  his  ancestors  and  the 
woman  be  come  of  kings  or  of  emperors,  or  if  the  man  be  come 
of  never  so  high  kin  and  the  woman  of  never  so  low  kin,  if 
they  love  one  another,  but  he  sinneth  in  Holy  Church  against 
God  and  hjs  deed,  and  therefore  he  shall  have  much  pain  and 
tribulations.'*  Being  assoiled  of  this  crying  sin,  St.  John  takes 
William  to  a  fire  *^grete  and  styngkyng, '*  in  which  he  sees  peo- 
ple burning  in  their  gay  clothes.  "  I  saw  some  with  collars  of 
gold  about  their  necks,  and  some  of  silver,  and  some  men  I  saw 
with  gay  girdles  of  silver  and  gold,  and  harnessed  with  horns 
about  their  necks,  some  with  mo  jagges  on  their  clothes  than 
whole  cloth,  others  full  of  jingles  and  bells  of  silver  all  over  set, 
and  some  with  long  pokes  on  their  sleeves,  and  women  with 
gowns  trailing  behind  them  a  long  space,  and  some  with  chap- 
lets  on  their  heads  of  gold  and  pearls  and  other  precious  stones. 
And  I  looked  on  him  that  I  saw  first  in  pain,  and  saw  the 
collars  and  gay  girdles  and  baldrics  burning,  and  the  fiends 
dragging  him  by  two  fingermits.  And  I  saw  the  jagges  that 
men  were  clothed  in  turn  all  to  adders,  to  dragons,  and  to 
toads,  and  ^many  other  orrible  bestes,*  sucking  them,  and  biting 
them,  and  stinging  them  with  all  their  might,  and  through  every 
jingle  I  saw  fiends  smite  burning  nails  of  fire  into  their  flesh. 
I  also  saw  fiends  drawing  down  the  skin  of  their  shoulders  like 
to  pokes,  and  cutting  them  off,  and  drawing  them  to  the  heads 
of  those  they  cut  them  from,  all  burning  as  fire.  And  then  I 
saw. the  women  that  had  side  trails  behind  them,  and  the  side 
trails  cut  off  by  the  fiends  and  burned  on  their  head;  and  some 
took  of  the  cutting  all  burning  and  stopped  therewith  their 
mouths,  their  noses,  and  their  ears.  I  saw  also  their  gay  chap- 
lets  of  gold  and  pearls  and  precious  stones  turned  into  nails  of 
iron,  burning,  and  fiends  with  burning  hammers  smiting  them 
into  their  heads,"  These  were  proud  and  vain  people.  Then 
he  saw  another  fire,  where  the  fiends  were  putting  out  people's 
eyes  and  pouring  molten  brass  and  lead  into  the  sockets,  and 
tearing  off  their  arms  and  the  nails  of  their  feet  and  hands, 
and  soldering  them  on  again.     This   was   the   doom  of   swearers. 


SABINE   BARING-GOULD  1^37 

William  saw  other  fires  wherein  the  devils  were  executing  tor- 
tures varied  and  horrible  on  their  unfortunate  victims.  We  need 
follow  him  no  further. 

At  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  the  Purgatory  in  Lough 
Derg  was  destroyed  by  orders  of  the  Pope,  on  hearing  the 
report  of  a  monk  of  Eymstadt  in  Holland,  who  had  visited  it, 
and  had  satisfied  himself  that  there  was  nothing  in  it  more 
remarkable  than  in  any  ordinary  cavern.  The  Purgatory  was 
closed  on  St.  Patrick's  Day,  1497;  but  the  belief  in  it  was  not  so 
speedily  banished  from  popular  superstition.  Calderon  made  it 
the  subject  of  one  of  his  dramas;  and  it  became  the  subject  of 
numerous  popular  chap-books  in  France  and  Spain,  where  during 
last  century  it  occupied  in  the  religious  belief  of  the  people  pre- 
cisely the  same  position  which  is  assumed  by  the  marvelous 
visions  of  heaven  and  hell  sold  by  hawkers  in  England  at  the 
present  day. 


THE   CORNISH  WRECKERS 
From  <  The  Vicar  of  Morwenstow  > 

WHEN  the  Rev.  R.  S.  Hawker  came  to  Morwenstow  in  1834, 
he  found  that  he  had  much  to  contend  with,  not  only  in 
the  external  condition  of  church  and  vicarage,  but  also  in 
that  which  is  of  greater  importance. 

"  The  farmers  of  the  parish  were  simple-hearted  and  respect- 
able; but  the  denizens  of  the  hamlet,  after  receiving  the  wages 
of  the  harvest  time,  eked  out  a  precarious  existence  in  the  win- 
ter, and  watched  eagerly  and  expectantly  for  the  shipwrecks  that 
were  certain  to  happen,  and  upon  the  plunder  of  which  they 
surely  calculated  for  the  scant  provision  of  their  families.  The 
wrecked  goods  supplied  them  with  the  necessaries  of  life,  and 
the  rended  planks  of  the  dismembered  vessel  contributed  to  the 
warmth  of  the  hovel  hearthstone. 

"  When  Mr.  Hawker  came  to  Morwenstow,  ^  the  cruel  and 
covetous  natives  of  the  strand,  the  wreckers  of  the  seas  and 
rocks  for  flotsam  and  jetsam,^  held  as  an  axiom  and  an  injunc- 
tion to  be  strictly  obeyed :  — 

"  *  Save  a  stranger  from  the  sea, 
And  he'll  turn  your  enemy!* 
ni — g? 


1538  SABINE   BARING-GOULD 

^'  The  Morwenstow  wreckers  allowed  a  fainting-  brother  to 
perish  in  the  sea  before  their  eyes  without  extending  a  hand  of 
safety, —  nay,  more,  for  the  egotistical  canons  of  a  shipwreck, 
superstitioiisly  obeyed,  permitted  and  absolved  the  crime  of  mur- 
der by  *  shoving  the  drowning  man  into  the  sea,  ^  to  be  swallowed 
by  the  waves.  Cain !  Cain !  where  is  thy  brother  ?  And  the 
wrecker  of  Morwenstow  answered  and  pleaded  in  excuse,  as  in 
the  case  of  imdiluted  brandy  after  meals,  ^  It  is  Cornish  custom.* 
The  illicit  spirit  of  Cornish  custom  was  supplied  by  the  smuggler, 
and  the  gold  of  the  wreck  paid  him  for  the  cursed  abomination 
of  drink.** 

One  of  Mr.  Hawker's  parishioners,  Peter  Barrow,  had  been 
for  full  forty  years  a  wrecker,  but  of  a  much  more  harmless 
description:  he  had  been  a  watcher  of  the  coast  for  such  objects 
as  the  waves  might  turn  up  to  reward  his  patience.  Another 
was  Tristam  Pentirc,  a  hero  of  contraband  adventure,  and  agent 
for  sale  of  smuggled  cargoes  in  bygone  times.  With  a  merry 
twinkle  of  the  eye,  and  in  a  sharp  and  ringing  tone,  he  loved  to 
tell  such  tales  of  wild  adventure  and  of  ^^derring  do,**  as  would 
make   the   foot  of  the   exciseman   falter  and  his  cheek  turn  pale. 

During  the  latter  years  of  last  century  there  lived  in  Well- 
combe,  one  of  Mr.  Hawker's  parishes,  a  man  whose  name  is  still 
remembered  with  terror  —  Cruel  Coppinger.  There  are  people 
still  alive  who  remember  his  wife. 

Local  recollections  of  the  man  have  molded  themselves  into 
the  rhyme  — 

*Will  you  hear  of  Cruel  Coppinger? 
He  came  from  a  foreign  land : 
He  was  brought  to  us  by  the  salt  water, 
He  was  carried  away  by  the  wind!** 

His  arrival  on  the  north  coast  of  Cornwall  was  signalized  by 
a  terrific  hurricane.  The  storm  came  up  Channel  from  the  south- 
west. A  strange  vessel  of  foreign  rig-  went  on  the  reefs  of  Harty 
Race,  and  was  broken  to  pieces  by  the  waves.  The  only  man 
who  came  ashore  was  the  skipper.  A  crowd  was  gathered  on  the 
sand,  on  horseback  and  on  foot,  women  as  well  as  men,  drawn 
together  by  the  tidings  of  a  probable  wreck.  Into  their  midst 
rushed  the  dripping  stranger,  and  bounded  suddenly  upon  the 
crupper  of  a  young  damsel  who  had  ridden  to  the  beach  to  see 
the  sight.      He  grasped  her  bridle,  and  shouting  in  some  foreign 


SABINE   BARING-GOULD  1^3^ 

tongue,  urged  the  double-laden  animal  into  full  speed,  and  the 
horse  naturally  took  his  homeward  way.  The  damsel  was  Miss 
Dinah  Hamlyn.  The  stranger  descended  at  her  father's  door,  and 
lifted  her  off  her  saddle.  He  then  announced  himself  as  a  Dane, 
named  Coppinger.  He  took  his  place  at  the  family  board,  and 
there  remained  until  he  had  secured  the  affections  and  hand  of 
Dinah.  The  father  died,  and  Coppinger  at  once  succeeded  to  the 
management  and  control  of  the  house,  which  thenceforth  became 
a  den  and  refuge  of  every  lawless  character  along  the  coast.  All 
kinds  of  wild  uproar  and  reckless  revelry  appalled  the  neighbor- 
hood day  and  night.  It  was  discovered  that  an  organized  band' 
of  smugglers,  wreckers,  and  poachers  made  this  house  their  ren- 
dezvous, and  that  "  Cruel  Coppinger  '^  was  their  captain.  In  those 
days,  and  in  that  far-away  region,  the  peaceable  inhabitants  were 
unprotected.  There  was  not  a  single  resident  gentleman  of  prop- 
erty and  weight  in  the  entire  district.  No  revenue  officer  durst 
exercise  vigilance  west  of  the  Tamar;  and  to  put  an  end  to  all 
such  •  surveillance  at  once,  the  head  of  a  ganger  was  chopped  ofE 
by  one  of  Coppinger's  gang  on  the  gunwale  of  a  boat. 

Strange  vessels  began  to  appear  at  regular  intervals  on  the 
coast,  and  signals  were  flashed  from  the  headlands  to  lead  them 
into  the  safest  creek  or  cove.  Amongst  these  vessels,  one,  a  full- 
rigged  schooner,  soon  became  ominously  conspicuous.  She  was 
for  long  the  chief  terror  of  the  Cornish  Channel.  Her  name  was 
The  Black  Prince.  Once,  with  Coppinger  on  board,  she  led  a 
revenue-cutter  into-  an  intricate  channel  near  the  Bull  Rock, 
where,  from  knowledge  of  the  bearings.  The  Black  Prince 
escaped  scathless,  while  the  king's  vessel  perished  with  all  on 
board.  In  those  times,  if  any  landsman  became  obnoxious  to 
Coppinger's  men,  he  was  seized  and  carried  on  board  The 
Black  Prince,  and  obliged  to  save  his  life  by  enrolling  himself 
in  the  crew.  In  1835,  an  old  man  of  the  age  of  ninety-seven 
related  to  Mr.  Hawker  that  he  had  been  so  abducted,  and  after 
two  years'  service  had  been  ransomed  by  his  friends  with  a  large 
sum.  *^  And  all,  *^  said  the  old  man  very  simply,  ^*  because  I  hap- 
pened to  see  one  man  kill  another,  and  they  thought  I  "vould 
mention  it.'* 

Amid  such  practices,  ill-gotten  gold  began  to  flow  and  ebb  in 
the  hands  of  Coppinger.  At  one  time  he  had  enough  money  to 
purchase  a  freehold  farm  bordering  on  the  sea.  When  the  day 
of  transfer  came,  he   and   one  of   his   followers   appeared  before 


je^Q  SABINE   BARING-GOULD 

the  lawyer  and  paid  the  money  in  dollars,  ducats,  doubloons, 
and  pistoles.  The  man  of  law  demurred,  but  Coppinger  with  an 
oath  bade  him  take  this  or  n.one.  The  document  bearing  Cop- 
pinger's  name  is  still  extant.  His  signature  is  traced  in  stern 
bold  characters,  and  under  his  autograph  is  the  word  <<  Thuro " 
(thorough)   also  in  his  own  handwriting. 

Long  impunity  increased  Coppinger's  daring.  There  were 
certain  bridle  roads  along  the  fields  over  which  he  exercised 
exclusive  control.  He  issued  orders  that  no  man  was  to  pass 
over  them  by  night,  and  accordingly  from  that  hour  none  ever 
did.  They  were  called  **  Coppinger's  Tracks. "  They  all  con- 
verged at  a  headland  which  had  the  name  of  Steeple  Brink. 
Here  the  cliff  sheered  off,  and  stood  three  hundred  feet  of  per- 
pendicular height,  a  precipice  of  smooth  rock  towards  the  beach, 
with  an  overhanging  face  one  hundred  feet  down  from  the  brow. 
Under  this  was  a  cave,  only  reached  by  a  cable  ladder  lowered 
from  above,  and  made  fast  below  on  a  projecting  crag.  It 
received  the  name  of  "Coppinger's  Cave.^^  Here  sheep  were 
tethered  to  the  rock,  and  fed  on  stolen  hay  and  corn  till  slaugh- 
tered; kegs  of  brandy  and  hollands  were  piled  around;  chests  of 
tea;  and  iron-bound  sea-chests  contained  the  chattels  and  reve- 
nues of  the  Coppinger  royalty  of  the  sea.     .     .     . 

But  the  end  arrived.  Money  became  scarce,  and  more  than 
one  armed  king's  cutter  was  seen  day  and  night  hovering  off  the 
land.  So  he  "who  came  with  the  water  went  with  the  wind." 
His  disappearance,  like  his  arrival,  was  commemorated  by  a 
storm. 

A  wrecker  who  had  gone  to  watch  the  shore,  saw,  as  the  sun 
went  down,  a  fnll-rigged  vessel  standing  off  and  on.  Coppinger 
came  to  the  beach,  put  off  in  a  boat  to  the  vessel,  and  jumped 
on  board.  She  spread  canvas,  stood  off  shore,  and  with  Cop- 
pinger in  her  was  seen  no  more.  That  night  was  one  of  storm. 
Whether  the  vessel  rode  it  out,  or  was  lost,  none  knew. 

• 

In  1864  a  large  ship  was  seen  in  distress  off  the  coast.  The 
Rev.  A.  Thynne,  rector  of  Kilkhampton,  at  once  drove  to  Mor- 
wenstow.  The  vessel  was  riding  at  anchor  a  mile  off  shore, 
west  of  Hartland  Race.  He  found  Mr.  Hawker  in  the  greatest 
excitement,  pacing  his  room  and  shouting  for  some  things  he 
wanted  to  put  in  his  greatcoat-pockets,  and  intensely  impatient 
because  his  carriage  was  not  round.     With  him  was  the  Rev.  W. 


SABINE   BARING-GOULD  1^41 

Valentine,  rector  of  Whixley  in  Yorkshire,  then  resident  at 
Chapel  in  the  parish  of  Morwenstow. 

"  What  are  you  going-  to  do  ?  '*  asked  the  rector  of  Kilkhamp- 
ton :  "  I  shall  drive  at  once  to  Bude  for  the  lifeboat.  ** 

"  No  good !  **  thundered  the  vicar,  *'  no  good  comes  out  of  the 
west.  You  must  go  east.  I  shall  go  to  Clovelly,  and  then,  if 
that  fails,  to  Appledore.  I  shall  not  stop  till  I  have  got  a  life- 
boat to  take  those  poor  fellows  off  the  wreck.  ^^ 

"Then,**  said  the  rector  of  Kilkhampton,  **  I  shall  go  to  Bude, 
and  see  to  the  lifeboat  there  being  brought  out.** 

"  Do  as  you  like ;  but  mark  my  words,  no  good  comes  of 
turning  to  the  west.  Why,  **  said  he,  "  in  the  primitive  church 
they  turned  to  the  west  to  renounce  the  Devil.** 

His  carriage  came  to  the  door,  and  he  drove  off  with  Mr. 
Valentine  as  fast  as  his  horses  could  spin  him  along  the  hilly, 
wretched  roads. 

Before  he  reached  Clovelly,  a  boat  had  put  off  with  the  mate 
from  the  ship,  which  was  the  Margaret  Quail,  laden  with  salt. 
The  captain  would  not  leave  the  vessel;  for,  till  deserted  by  him, 
no  salvage  could  be  claimed.  The  mate  was  picked  up  on  the 
way,   and  the  three  reached  Clovelly. 

Down  the  street  proceeded  the  following  procession  —  the 
street  of  Clovelly  being  a  flight  of  stairs:  — 

First,  the  vicar  of  Morwenstow  in  a  claret-colored  coat,  with 
long  tails  flying  in  the  gale,  blue  knitted  jersey,  and  pilot-boots, 
his  long  silver  locks  fluttering  about  his  head.  He  was  appeal- 
ing to  the  fishermen  and  sailors  of  Clovelly  to  put  out  in  their 
lifeboat  to  rescue  the  crew  of  the  Margaret  Quail.  The  men 
stood  sulky,  lounging  about  with  folded  arms,  or  hands  in  their 
pockets,  and  sou' -westers  slouched  over  their  brows.  The  women 
were  screaming  at  the  tops  of  their  voices  that  they  would  not 
have  their  husbands  and  sons  and  sweethearts  enticed  away  to 
risk  their  lives  to  save  wrecked  men.  Above  the  clamor  of  their 
shrill  tongues  and  the  sough  of  the  wind  rose  the  roar  of  the 
vicar's  voice:  he  was  convulsed  with  indignation,  and  poured 
forth  the  most  sacred  appeals  to  their  compassion  for  drowning 
sailors. 

Second  in  the  procession  moved  the  Rev.  W.  Valentine,  with 
purse  full  of  gold  in  his  hand,  offering  any  amount  of  money  to 
the  Clovelly  men,  if  they  would  only  go  forth  in  the  lifeboat  to 
the  wreck 


1^42  SABINE   BARING-GOULD 

TJiird  came  the  mate  of  the  Margaret  Quail,  restrained  by 
no  consideration  of  cloth,  swearing  and  damning  right  and  left, 
in  a  towering  rage  at  the  cowardice  of  the  Clovelly  men. 

Fourth  came  John,  the  servant  of  Mr.  Hawker,  with  bottles 
of  whisky  under  his  arm,  another  inducement  to  the  men  to 
relent  and  be  merciful  to  their  imperiled  brethren. 

The  first  appeal  was  to  their  love  of  heaven  and  to  their 
humanity;  the  second  was  to  their  pockets,  their  love  of  gold; 
the  third  to  their  terrors,  their  fear  of  Satan,  to  whom  they  were 
consigned;  and  the   fourth   to  their  stomachs,  their  love  of  grog. 

But  all  appeals  were  in  vain.  Then  Mr.  Hawker  returned  to 
his  carriage,  and  drove  away  farther  east  to  Appledore,  where 
he  secured  the  lifeboat.  It  was  mounted  on  a  wagon;  ten  horses 
were  harnessed  to  it;  and  as  fast  as  possible  it  was  conveyed 
to  the  scene  of  distress. 

But  in  the  mean  while  the  captain  of  the  Margaret  Quail, 
despairing  of  help  and  thinking  that  his  vessel  would  break  up 
under  him,  came  off  in  his  boat  with  the  rest  of  the  crew,  trust- 
ing rather  to  a  rotten  boat,  patched  with  canvas  which  Vaey  had 
tarred  over,  than  to  the  tender  mercies  of  the  covetous  Clovellites, 
in  whose  veins  ran  the  too  recent  blood  of  wreckers.  The  only 
living  being  left  on  board  was  a  poor  dog. 

No  sooner  was  the  captain  seen  to  leave  the  ship  than  the 
Clovelly  men  lost  their  repugnance  to  go  to  sea.  They  manned 
boats  at  once,  gained  the  Margaret  Quail,  and  claimed  three 
thousand  pounds  for  salvage. 

There  was  an  action  in  court,  as  the  owners  refused  to  pay 
such  a  sum;  and  it  was  lost  by  the  Clovelly  men,  who  however 
got  an  award  of  twelve  hundred  pounds.  The  case  turned  some- 
what on  the  presence  of  the  dog  on  the  wreck;  and  it  was  argued 
that  the  vessel  was  not  deserted,  because  a  dog  had  been  left  on 
board  to  keep  guard  for  its  masters.  The  owner  of  the  cargo 
failed;  and  the  amount  actually  paid  to  the  salvors  was  six  hun- 
dred pounds  to  two  steam-tugs  (three  hundred  pounds  each),  and 
three  hundred  pounds  to  the  Clovelly  skiff  and  sixteen  men. 

Mr.  Hawker  went  round  the  country  indignantly  denouncing 
the  sailors  of  Clovelly,  and  with  justice.  It  roused  all  the  right- 
eous wrath  in  his  breast.  And  as  may  well  be  believed,  no  love 
was  borne  him  by  the  inhabitants  of  that  little  fishing  village. 
They  would  probably  have  made  a  wreck  of  him  had  he  ven- 
tured among  them. 


1543 


JANE   BARLOW 

(1S60-1917) 


[ANE  Barlow  was  the  daughter  of  J.  W.  Barlow,  vice-provost 
of  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  from  which  in  the  days  of  her 
literary  fame  she  received  the  honorary  degree  of  D.Litt. 
She  was  born  at  Clontarf,  County  Dublin,  on  October  17th,  i860,  and 
spent  most  of  her  life  in  the  seclusion  of  a  cottage  at  Raheny  in  the  same 
neighborhood.  Although  her  family  had  been  in  Ireland  for  genera- 
tions, she  came  of  English  stock,  and  the  knowledge  and  skill  she 
displayed  in  depicting  Irish  peasant  life  were  hers  not  through  Celtic 
blood  and  affinities,  but  by  a  sympathetic 
genius  and  inspiration. 

The  publication  of  her  writings  in  book 
form  was  preceded  by  the  appearance  of 
some  poems  and  stories  in  the  magazines, 
the  Dublin  University  Review  of  1885  con- 
taining *■  Walled  Out ;  or,  Eschatology  in  a 
Bog.^  ^  Irish  Idyls  >  (1892),  and  ^  Bogland 
Studies^  (of  the  same  year),  show  the  same 
pitiful,  sombre  pictures  of  Irish  peasant 
life  about  the  sodden-roofed  mud  hut  and 
"pitaties^^  boiling,  which  only  a  genial, 
impulsive,  generous,  light-hearted,  half- 
Greek     and    half-philosophic    people     could 

make  endurable  to  the  reader  or  attractive  to  the  writer.  The  innate 
sweetness  of  the  Irish  character,  which  the  author  brings  out  with 
fine  touches,  makes  it  worth  portrayal.  ^*It  is  safe  to  say,*^  writes  a 
critic,  "that  the  philanthropist  or  the  political  student  interested  in 
the  eternal  Irish  problem  will  learn  more  from  Miss  Barlow's  twin 
volumes  than  from  a  dozen  Royal  Commissions  and  a  handred  Blue 
Books.  ^^  Her  sympathy  constantly  crops  out,  as,  for  instance,  in  the 
mirthful  tale  of  < Jerry  Dunne's  Basket,^  where  — 


Jane  Barlow 


«Andy  Joyce  had  an  ill-advised  predilection  for  seeing  things  which  he 
called  <dacint  and  proper  >  about  him,  and  he  built  some  highly  superior 
sheds  on  the  lawn,  to  the  bettering,  no  doubt,  of  his  cattle's  condition.  The 
abrupt  raising  of  his  rent  by  fifty  per  cent,  was  a  broad  hint  which  most 
men  would  have  taken ;  and  it  did  keep  Andy  ruefully  quiet  for  a  season 
or  two.  Then,  however,  having  again  saved  up  a  trifle,  he  could  not 
resist  the  temptation  to  drain  the  swampy  comer  of  the  farthest  river-field 


1^44  JANE   BARLOW 

which  was  as  kind  a  bit  of  land  as  you  could  wish,  only  for  the  water  lying 
on  it,  and  in  which  he  afterward  raised  himself  a  remarkably  fine  crop  of 
white  oats.  The  sight  of  them  <done  his  heart  good,>  he  said,  exultantly, 
nothing  recking  that  it  was  the  last  touch  of  farmer's  pride  he  would  ever 
feel.  Yet  on  the  next  quarter-day  the  Joyces  received  notice  to  quit,  and 
their  landlord  determined  to  keep  the  vacated  holding  in  his  own  hands; 
those  new  sheds  were  just  the  thing  for  his  young  stock.  Andy,  in  fact,  had 
done  his  best  to  improve  himself  off  the  face  of  the  earth. » 

The  long  story  which  followed  these  sketches,  (Kerrigan's  Quality) 
(1894),  is  told  with  her  distinguishing  charm,  but  the  book  has 
not  the  close-knit  force  of  the  (Idyls.)  Miss  Barlow  herself  pre- 
ferred the  (Bogland  Studies,)  because,  she  said,  they  are  «a  sort  of 
poetry.))  «I  had  set  my  heart  too  long  upon  being  a  poet  ever  to 
give  up  the  idea  quite  contentedly;  (the  old  hope  is  hardest  to  be  lost.) 
A  real  poet  I  can  never  be,  as  I  have,  I  fear,  nothing  of  the  lyrical 
faculty;  and  a  poet  without  that  is  worse  than  a  bird  without  wings, 
so,  like  Mrs.  Browning's  Nazianzen,  I  am  doomed  to  look  (at  the 
lyre  hung  out  of  reach.))) 

Besides  the  three  books  named  above,  Miss  Barlow  published 
(The  Battle  of  the  Frogs  and  IMice  in  English)  (1894)  and  about  a 
score  of  volumes  of  long  and  short  stories,  including  a  second  series  of 
(Irish  Idyls)  (1S95).  In  the  last-mentioned  we  again  have  the  sorrows 
and  joys  of  the  small  hamlet  in  the  west  of  Ireland,  where  ((the  broad 
level  spreads  away  and  away  to  the  horizon  before  and  behind  and 
on  either  side  of  you,  very  sombre-hued,  yet  less  black-a-vised  than 
more  frequent  bergs,))  where  in  the  distance  the  mountains  (doom 
up  on  its  borders  much  less  substantial,  apparen-tly,  in  fabric 
than  so  many  spirals  of  blue  turf  smoke,))  and  where  the  curlew's 
cry  ((can  set  a  whole  landscape  to  melancholy  in  one  chromatic 
phrase.)) 

Miss  Barlow's  death  occurred  on  April  19th,  191 7. 


THE    WIDOW    JOYCE'S    CLOAK 
From  (Strangers  at  LisconneP 

STILL,  although  the  Tinkers'  name  has  become  a  byword  among 
us  through  a  long  series  of  petty  offenses  rather  than  any 
one  flagrant  crime,  there  is  a  notable  misdeed  on  record 
against  them,  which  has  never  been  forgotten  in  the  lapse  of 
many  years.  It  was  perpetrated  soon  after  the  death  of  Mrs. 
Kilfoyle's  mother,  the  Widow  Joyce,  an  event  which  is  but  dimly 
recollected  now  at  Lisconnel,  as  nearly  half  a  centur}^  has  gone  by. 


JANE   BARLOW  je^^ 

She  did  not  very  long  survive  her  husband,  and  he  had  left  his 
roots  behind  in  his  little  place  at  Clonmena,  where,  as  we  know, 
he  had  farmed  not  wisely  but  too  well,  and  had  been  put  out  of 
it  for  his  pains  to  expend  his  energy  upon  our  oozy  black  sods 
and  stark-white  bowlders.  But  instead  he  moped  about,  fretting 
for  his  fair  green  fields,  and  few  proudly  cherished  beasts,  — 
especially  the  little  old  Kerry  cow.  And  at  his  fimeral  the 
neighbors  said,  ^^  Ah,  bedad,  poor  man,  God  help  him,  he  niver 
held  up  his  head  agin  from  that  good  day  to  this.'* 

When  Mrs.  Joyce  felt  that  it  behooved  her  to  settle  her 
affairs,  she  found  that  the  most  important  possession  she  had  to 
dispose  of  was  her  large  cloak.  She  had  acquired  it  at  the  pros- 
perous time  of  her  marriage,  and  it  was  a  very  superior  specimen 
of  its  kind,  in  dark-blue  cloth  being  superfine,  and  its  ample 
capes  and  capacious  hood  being  double-lined  and  quilted  and 
stitched  in  a  way  which  I  cannot  pretend  to  describe,  but  which 
made  it  a  most  substantial  and  handsome  garment.  If  Mrs. 
Joyce  had  been  left  entirely  to  her  own  choice  in  the  matter,  I 
think  she  would  have  bequeathed  it  to  her  younger  daughter 
Theresa,  notwithstanding  that  custom  clearly  designated  Bessy 
Kilfoyle,  the  eldest  of  the  family,  as  the  heiress.  For  she  said 
to  herself  that  poor  Bessy  had  her  husband  and  childer  to  con- 
sowl  her,  any  way,  but  little  Theresa,  the  crathur,  had  ne'er  such 
a  thing  at  all,  and  wouldn't  have,  not  she,  God  love  her.  <<And 
the  back  of  me  hand  to  some  I  could  name.'*  It  seemed  to  her 
that  to  leave  the  child  the  cloak  would  be  almost  like  keeping  a 
warm  wing  spread  over  her  in  the  cold  wide  world;  and  there 
was  no  fear  that  Bessy  would  take  it  amiss. 

But  Theresa  herself  protested  strongly  against  such  a  disposi- 
tion, urging  for  one  thing  that  sure  she'd  be  lost  in  it  entirely 
if  ever  she  put  it  on;  a  not  unfounded  objection,  as  Theresa  was 
several  sizes  smaller  than  Bessy,  and  even  she  fell  far  short  of 
her  mother  in  stature  and  portliness.  Theresa  also  said  confi- 
dently with  a  sinking  heart,  <*  But  sure,  anyhow,  mother  jewel, 
what  matter  about  it  ?  'Twill  be  all  gone  to  houles  and  flitters 
and  thraneens,  and  so  it  will,  plase  goodness,  afore  there's  any 
talk  of  anybody  else  wearin'  it  except  your  own  ould  self."  And 
she  expressed  much  the  same  conviction  one  day  to  her  next- 
door  neighbor,  old  Biddy  Ryan,  to  whom  she  had  run  in  for  the 
loan  of  a  sup  of  sour  milk,  which  Mrs.  Joyce  fancied.  To 
Biddy's   sincere  regret  she   could  offer  Theresa  barely  a   skimpy 


1^46  JANE  BARLOW 

nogg-in  of  milk,  and  only  a  meagre  shred  of  encouragement;  and 
by  way  of  eking  out  the  latter  with  its  sorry  stibstitute,  consola- 
tion, she  said  as  she  tilted  the  jug  perpendicularly  to  extract  its 
last  drop:  — 

<*  Well,  sure,  me  dear,  I  do  be  sayin'  me  prayers  for  her 
every  sun  goes  over  our  heads  that  she  might  be  left  wid  you 
this  great  while  yet;  'deed,  I  do  so.  But  ah,  acushla,  if  we  could 
be  keepin'  people  that-a-way,  would  there  be  e'er  a  funeral  iver 
goin'  black  on  the  road  at  all  at  all?  I'm  thinkin'  there's  scarce 
a  one  livin',  and  he  as  ould  and  foolish  and  little-good-for  as  you 
plase,  but  some  crathur'ill  be  grudgin'  him  to  his  grave,  that's 
himself  may  be  all  the  while  wishin'  he  was  in  it.  Or,  morebe- 
token,  how  can  we  tell  what  quarc  ugly  misfortin'  thim  that's 
took  is  took  out  of  the  road  of,  that  we  should  be  as  good  as 
biddin'  thim  stay  till  it  comes  to  ruinate  them  ?  So  it's  prayin' 
away  I  am,  honey, '*  said  old  Biddy,  whom  Theresa  could  not 
help  hating  heart-sickly.  ^^  But  like  enough  the  Lord  might  know 
better  than  to  be  mindin'  a  word  I  say.'^ 

And  it  seemed  that  He  did;  anyway,  the  day  soon  came  when 
the  heavy  blue  cloak  passed  into  Mrs.   Kilfoyle's  possession. 

At  that  time  it  was  clear,  still  autumn  weather,  with  just  a 
sprinkle  of  frost  white  on  the  wayside  grass,  like  the  wraith  of 
belated  moonlight,  when  the  sun  rose,  and  shimmering  into  rain- 
bow stars  by  noon.  But  about  a  month  later  the  winter  swooped 
suddenly  on  Lisconnel:  with  wild  winds  and  cold  rain  that  made 
crystal-silver  streaks  down  the  purple  of  the  great  mountain- 
heads  peering  in  over  our  bogland. 

So  one  perishing  Saturday  Mrs.  Kilfoyle  made  up  her  mind 
that  she  would  wear  her  warm  legacy  on  the  bleak  walk  to  Mass 
next  morning,  and  reaching  it  down  from  where  it  was  stored 
away  among  the  rafters  wrapped  in  an  old  sack,  she  shook  it 
respectfully  out  of  its  straight-creased  folds.  As  she  did  so  she 
noticed  that  the  binding  of  the  hood  had  ripped  in  one  place, 
and  that  the  lining  was  fraying  out,  a  mishap  which  should  be 
promptly  remedied  before  it  spread  any  further.  She  was  not 
a  very  expert  needlewoman,  and  she  thought  she  had  better  run 
over  the  way  to  consult  Mrs.  O'Driscoll,  then  a  young  matron, 
esteemed    the    handiest    and    most    helpful    person    in    Lisconnel. 

<<  It's  the  nathur  of  her  to  be  settin'  things  straight  wherever 
she  goes,'*  Mrs.  Kilfoyle  said  to  herself  as  she  stood  in  her 
doorway  waiting  for  the  rain  to  clear  off,  and  looking  across  the 


JANE   BARLOW 


1547 


road  to  the  sodden  roof  which  sheltered  her  neighbor's  head. 
It  had  long  been  lying  low,  vanquished  by  a  trouble  which  even 
she  could  not  set  to  rights,  and  some  of  the  older  people  say 
that  things  have  gone  a  little  crookeder  in  Lisconnel  ever  since. 
The  shower  was  a  vicious  one,  with  the  sting  of  sleet  and 
hail  in  its  drops,  pelted  about  by  gusts  that  ruffled  up  the 
puddles  into  ripples,  all  set  on  end,  like  the  feathers  of  a  fright- 
ened hen.  The  hens  themselves  stood  disconsolately  sheltering 
under  the  bank,  mostly  on  one  leg,  as  if  they  preferred  to  keep 
up  the  slightest  possible  connection  with  such  a  very  damp  and 
disagreeable  earth.  You  could  not  see  far  in  any  direction  for 
the  fluttering  sheets  of  mist,  and  a  stranger  who  had  been  com- 
ing along  the  road  from  Duffclane  stepped  out  of  them  abruptly 
quite  close  to  Mrs.  Kilfoyle's  door,  before  she  knew  that  there 
was  anybody  near.  He  was  a  tall,  elderly  man,  gaunt  and 
grizzled,  very  ragged,  and  so  miserable -looking  that  Mrs.  Kil- 
foyle  could  have  felt  nothing  but  compassion  foi*  him  had  he 
not  carried  over  his  shoulder  a  bunch  of  shiny  cans,  which  was 
to  her  mind  as  satisfactory  a  passport  as  a  ticket  of  leave.  For 
although  these  were  yet  rather  early  days  at  Lisconnel,  the 
Tinkers  had  already  begun  to  establish  their  reputation.  So 
when  he  stopped  in  front  of  her  and  said,  "Good-day,  ma'am, ^^ 
she  only  replied  distantly,  "It's  a  hardy  mornin',^^  and  hoped 
he  would  move  on.  But  he  said,  "It's  cruel  could,  ma'am, *^  and 
continued  to  stand  looking  at  her  with  wide  and  woful  eyes,  in 
which  she  conjectured  —  erroneously,  as  it  happened  —  hunger 
for  warmth  or  food.  Under  these  circumstances,  what  could  be 
done  by  a  woman  who  was  conscious  of  owning  a  redly  glowing 
hearth  with  a  big  black  pot,  fairly  well  filled,  clucking  and 
bobbing  upon  it  ?  To  possess  such  wealth  as  this,  and  think 
seriously  of  withholding  a  share  from  anybody  who  urges  the 
incontestable  claim  of  wanting  it,  is  a  mood  altogether  foreign 
to  Lisconnel,  where  the  responsibilities  of  poverty  are  no  doubt 
very  imperfectly  understood.  Accordingly  Mrs.  Kilfoyle  said  to 
the  tattered  tramp,  "  Ah,  thin,  step  inside  and  have  a  couple  of 
hot  pitaties.  *^  And  when  he  accepted  the  invitation  without  much 
alacrity,  as  if  he  had  something  else  on  his  mind,  she  picked  for 
him  out  of  the  steam  two  of  the  biggest  potatoes,  whose  earth- 
colored  skins,  cracking,  showed  a  fair  flouriness  within ;  and  she 
shook   a   little   heap   of    salt,    the   only  relish   she   had,    onto   the 


je^g  JANE   BARLOW 

chipped  white  plate  as  she  handed  it  to  him,    saying,    <*  Sit  you 
down  be  the  fire,  there,  and  git  a  taste  of  the  heat.** 

Then  she  hfted  her  old   shawl   over  her  head,   and  ran  out  to 
see   where   at  all   Brian  and  Thady  were  gettin'  their   deaths  on 
her   under   the    pours   of   rain;    and   as   she    passed   the    Keoghs' 
adjacent  door  —  which  was  afterward  the  Sheridans',  whence  their 
Larry  departed  so  reluctantly  —  young  Mts.   Keogh  called  her  to 
come  in  and  look   at  "the   child,"  who,  being  a  new  and  unique 
possession,   was   liable  to   develop   alarmingly  strange   symptoms, 
and   had   now  "  woke    up   wid   his   head   that  hot,  you   might   as 
well   put   your   hand   on    the   hob   of   the   grate.*'      Mrs.   Kilfoyle 
stayed  only  long  enough  to  suggest,  as  a  possible  remedy,  a  drop 
of  two-milk  whey,     "But  ah,  sure,  woman  dear,  where  at  all  'ud 
we   come   by   that,  wid  the   crathur  of  a  goat  scarce  wettin'  the 
bottom    of   the   pan  ?  **    and   to   draw   reassuring   omens   from   the 
avidity  with  which  the  invalid  grabbed  at  a  sugared  crust.      In 
fact,  she  was  less  than  five  minutes  out  of  her  house;   but  when 
she  returned  to  it,  she  found  it  empty.      First,  she  noted  with  a 
moderate  thrill  of  surprise  that  her  visitor  had  gone  away  leav- 
ing  his    potatoes    untouched;    and   next,    with    a   rough    shock    of 
dismay,  that  her  cloak  no  longer  lay  on  the  window  seat  where 
she    had    left    it.      From    that   moment    she    never    felt   any   real 
doubts   about   what   had  befallen   her,  though  for  some  time  she 
kept   on    trying   to    conjure    them  up,   and   searched  wildly  round 
and    round    and    roimd    her    little    room,    like    a    distracted    bee 
strayed  into  the  hollow  furze-bush,  before  she  sped  over  to  Mrs. 
O'Driscoll  with  the  news  of  her  loss. 

It  spread  rapidly  through  Lisconnel,  and  brought  the  neigh- 
bors together  exclaiming  and  condoling,  though  not  in  great 
force,  as  there  was  a  fair  going  on  down  bey  ant,  which  nearly 
all  the  men  and  some  of  the  women  had  attended.  This  was 
accounted  cruel  unlucky,  as  it  left  the  place  without  any  one 
able-bodied  and  active  enough  to  go  in  pursuit  of  the  thief.  A 
prompt  start  might  have  overtaken  him,  especially  as  he  was 
said  to  be  a  "thrifle  lame-futted '* ;  though  Mrs.  M'Gurk,  who  had 
seen  him  come  down  the  hill,  opined  that  "  'twasn't  the  sort  of 
lameness  'ud  hinder  the  miscreant  of  steppin'  out,  on'y  a  quare 
manner  of  flourish  he  had  in  a  one  of  his  knees,  as  if  he  was 
gatherin'  himself  up  to  make  an  offer  at  a  grasshopper's  lep,  and 
then  thinkin'  better  of  it.** 


JANE   BARLOW  j^^^ 

Little  Thady  Kilfoyle  reported  that  he  had  met  the  strani^e 
man  a  bit  down  the  road,  **  leggin'  it  along  at  a  great  rate,  wid 
a  black  rowl  of  somethin'  tmder  his  arm  that  he  looked  to  be 
crumplin'  up  as  small  as  he  could, *^  —  the  word  "crumpling** 
went  acutely  to  Mrs.  Kilfoyle's  heart,  —  and  some  long-sighted 
people  declared  that  they  could  still  catch  glimpses  of  a  receding 
figure  through  the  hovering  fog  on  the  way  toward  Sallinbeg. 

"  I'd  think  he'd  be  beyant  seein'  afore  now,**  said  Mrs.  Kil- 
foyle, who  stood  in  the  rain,  the  disconsolate  centre  of  the  group 
about  her  door;  all  women  and  children  except  old  Johnny  Keogh, 
who  was  so  bothered  and  deaf  that  he  grasped  new  situations 
slowly  and  feebly,  and  had  now  an  impression  of  somebody's 
house  being  on  fire.  "  He  must  ha'  took  off  wid  himself  the 
instiant  me  back  was  turned,  for  ne'er  a  crumb  had  he  touched 
of  the  pitaties.  ** 

"Maybe   he'd   that  much  shame  in  him,**  said  Mrs.   O'Driscoll. 

"  They'd  a  right  to  ha'  choked  him,  troth  and  they  had,  **  said 
Ody  Rafferty's  aunt. 

"Is  it  chokin'?**  said  young  Mrs.  M'Gurk,  bitterly.  "Sure  the 
bigger  thief  a  body  is,  the  more  he'll  thrive  on  whatever  he  gits; 
you  might  think  villiny  was  as  good  as  butter  to  people's  pitaties, 
you  might  so.  Shame  how  are  you  ?  Liker  he'd  ate  all  he  could 
swally  in  the  last  place  he  got  the  chance  of  layin'  his  hands  on 
any  thin'.  ** 

"  Och,  woman  alive,  but  it's  the  fool  you  were  to  let  him  out 
of  your  sight,**  said  Ody  Rafferty's  aunt.  "If  it  had  been  me,  I'd 
niver  ha'  took  me  eyes  off  him,  for  the  look  of  him  on'y  goin'  by 
made  me  flesh  creep  upon  me  bones.** 

"  'Deed  was  I,  **  said  Mrs.  Kilfoyle,  sorrowfully,  "  a  fine  fool. 
And  vexed  she'd  be,  rael  vexed,  if  she  guessed  the  way  it  was 
gone  on  us,  for  the  dear  knows  what  dirty  ould  rapscallions  'ill 
get  the  .wearin'  of  it  now.      Rael  vexed  she'd  be.** 

This  speculation  was  more  saddening  than  the  actual  loss  of 
the  cloak,  thoiigh  that  bereft  her  wardrobe  of  far  and  away  its 
most  valuable  property,  which  should  have  descended  as  an  heir- 
loom to  her  little  Katty,  who,  however,  being  at  present  but 
three  months  old,  lay  sleeping  happily  unaware  of  the  cloud  that 
had  come  over  her  prospects. 

"  I  wish  to  goodness  a  couple  of  the  lads  'ud  step  home  wid 
themselves  this  minit  of  time,**  said  Mrs.  M'Gurk.  "They'd  come 
up   wid   him   yet,  and    take    it    off   of    him   ready  enough.      And 


jeco  JANE   BARLOW 

smash   his   ugly  head    for   him,   if  he  would  be  givin'  them   any 
impidcnce.^^ 

<<Aye,  and  'twould  be  a  real  charity  —  the  mane  baste;  —  or 
sling  him  in  one  of  the  bog-houles/*  said  the  elder  Mrs.  Keogh, 
a  mild-lookinof  little  old  woman.  "  I'd  liefer  than  nine  nine- 
pennies  see  thim  comin'  along.  But  I'm  afeard  it's  early  for 
thim   yet. " 

Everybody's  eyes  turned,  as  she  spoke,  toward  the  ridge  of 
the  Knockawn,  though  with  no  particular  expectation  of  seeing 
what  they  wished  upon  it.  But  behold,  just  at  that  moment 
three  figures,  blurred  among  the  gray  rain-mists,  looming  into 
view. 

« Be  the  powers,*^  said  Mrs.-  M'Gurk,  jubilantly,  <<it's  Ody 
Rafferty  himself.  To  your  sowls!  Now  you've  a  great  good 
chance,  ma'am,  to  be  gettin'  it  back.  He's  the  boy  'ill  leg  it  over 
all  before  him  ^^  —  for  in  those  days  Ody  was  lithe  and  limber — 
"  and  it's  hard-set  the  thievin'  Turk  'ill  be  to  get  the  better  of 
him  at  a  racin'  match  —  Hi  —  Och.^^  She  had  begun  to  hail  him 
with  a  call  eager  and  shrill,  which  broke  off  in  a  strangled  croak", 
like  a  young  cock's  unsuccessful  effort.  "  Och,  murdher,  murdher, 
murdher,^*  she  said  to  the  bystanders,  in  a  disgusted  imdertone. 
*  I'll  give  you  me  misfort'nit  word   thim   other  two  is  the  polis.  '* 

Now  it  might  seem  on  the  face  of  things  that  the  arrival  of 
those  two  active  and  stalwart  civil  servants  would  have  been 
welcomed  as  happening  just  in  the  nick  of  time;  yet  it  argues  an 
alien  ignorance  to  suppose  such  a  view  of  the  matter  by  any 
means  possible.  The  men  in  invisible  green  tunics  belonged  com- 
pletely to  the  category  of  pitaty-blights,  rint-wamin's,  fevers,  and 
the  like  devastators  of  life,  that  dog  a  man  more  or  less  all 
through  it,  but  close  in  on  him,  a  pitiful  quarry,  when  the  bad 
seasons  come  and  the  childer  and  the  old  crathurs  are  starvin' 
wid  the  hunger,  and  his  own  heart  is  broke;  therefore,  to  accept 
assistance  from  them  in  their  official  capacity  would  have  been  a 
proceeding  most  reprehensibly  unnatural.  To  put  a  private  quarrel 
or  injury  into  the  hands  of  the  peelers  were  a  disloyal  making  of 
terms  with  the  public  foe;  a  condoning  of  great  permanent 
wrongs  for  the  sake  of  a  trivial  temporary  convenience.  Lisconnel 
has  never  been  skilled  in  the  profitable  and  ignoble  art  of  utiliz- 
ing its  enemies.  Not  that  anybody  was  more  than  vaguely 
conscious  of  these  sentiments,  much  less  attempted  to  express 
them    in    set    terms.      When    a   policeman    appeared   there    in    an 


JANE  BARLOW  1^51 

inquiring  mood,  what  people  said  among  themselves  was,  ^*  Musha 
cock  him  up.  I  hope  he'll  get  his  health  till  I  would  be  tellin' 
him,"  or  words  to  that  effect;  while  in  reply  to  his  questions, 
they  made  statements  superficially  so  clear  and  simple,  and  essen- 
tially so  bewilderingly  involved,  that  the  longest  experience  could 
do  little  more  for  a  constable  than  teach  him  the  futility  of  wast- 
ing his  time  in  attempts  to  disentangle  them. 

Thus  it  was  that  when  Mrs.  Kilfoyle  saw  who  Ody's  compan- 
ions were,  she  bade  a  regretful  adieu  to  her  hopes  of  recovering 
her  stolen  property.  For  how  could  she  set  him  on  the  Tinker's 
felonious  track  without  apprising  them  likewise  ?  You  might  as 
well  try  to  huroosh  one  chicken  off  a  rafter  and  not  scare  the 
couple  that  were  huddled  beside  it.  The  impossibility  became 
more  obvious  presently  as  the  constables,  striding  quickly  down 
to  where  the  group  of  women  stood  in  the  rain  and  wind  with 
fluttering  shawls  and  flapping  cap-borders,  said  briskly,  '^  Good-day 
to  you  all.  Did  any  of  yous  happen  to  see  e'er  a  one  of  them 
tinkerin'  people  goin'  by  here  this  mornin'  ?  * 

It  was  a  moment  of  strong  temptation  to  everybody,  but  espe- 
cially to  Mrs.  Kilfoyle,  who  had  in  her  mind  that  vivid  picture 
of  her  precious  cloak  receding  from  her  along  the  wet  road, 
recklessly  wisped  up  in  the  grasp  of  as  thankless  a  thievin'  black- 
hearted slieveen  as  ever  stepped,  and  not  yet,  perhaps,  utterly 
out  of  reach,  though  every  fleeting  instant  carried  it  nearer  to 
that  hopeless  point.  However,  she  and  her  neighbors  stood  the 
test  unshaken.  Mrs.  Ryan  rolled  her  eyes  deliberatively,  and 
said  to  Mrs.  M'Gurk,  <^The  saints  bless  us,  was  it  yisterday  or 
the  day  before,  me  dear,  you  said  you  seen  a  couple  of  them 
below,  near  ould  O'Beirne's  ?  " 

And  Mrs.  M'Gurk  replied,  "Ah,  sure,  not  at  all,  ma'am,  glory 
be  to  goodness.  I  couldn't  ha'  tould  you  such  a  thing,  for  I 
wasn't  next  or  nigh  the  place.  Would  it  ha'  been  Ody  Rafferty's 
aunt  r  She  was  below  there  fetchin'  up  a  bag  of  male,  and  bedad 
she  came  home  that  dhreeped,  the  crathur,  you  might  ha'  thought 
she'd  been  after  fishin'  it  up  out  of  the  botthom  of  one  of  thim 
bog-houles.  '* 

And  Mrs.  Kilfoyle  heroically  hustled  her  Thady  into  the  house, 
as  she  saw  him  on  the  brink  of  beginning  loudly  to  relate  his 
encounter  with  a  strange  man,  and  desired  him.  to  whisht  and 
stay  where  he  was  in  a  manner  so  sternly  repressive  that  he 
actually  remained  there  as  if  he  had  been  a  pebble  dropped  into 
a  pool,  and  not,  as  usual,  a  cork  to  bob  up  again  immediately. 


l^^2  JANE   BARLOW 

Then  Mrs.  M'Gurk  made  a  bold  stroke,  designed  to  shake  off 
the  hampering  presence  of  the  professionals,  and  enable  Ody's 
amateur  services  to  be  utilized  while  there  was  yet  time. 

"  I  declare,  **  she  said,  ^*  now  that  I  think  of  it,  I  seen  a  feller 
crossin'  the  ridge  along  there  a  while  ago,  like  as  if  he  was 
comin"  from  vSallinbeg  ways;  and  according  to  the  apparence  of 
him,  I  wouldn't  won'er  if  he  was  a  one  of  thim  tinker  crathures 
—  carry  in'  a  big  clump  of  cans  he  was,  at  any  rate  —  I  noticed 
the  shine  of  thim.  And  he  couldn't  ha'  got  any  great  way  yet 
to  spake  of,  supposin'  there  was  anybody  lookin'  to  folly  after 
him." 

But  Constable  Black  crushed  her  hopes  as  he  replied,  "Ah, 
it's  nobody  comin'  /ro;n  Sallinbeg  that  we've  anything  to  say  to. 
There's  after  bein'  a  robbery  last  night,  down  below  at  Jerry 
Dunne's  —  a  shawl  as  good  as  new  took,  that  his  wife's  ragin'  over 
frantic,  along  wid  a  sight  of  fowl  and  other  things.  And  the 
Tinkers  that  was  settled  this  long  while  in  the  boreen  at  the 
back  of  his  haggard  is  quit  out  of  it  afore  daylight  this  momin', 
every  rogue  of  them.  So  we'd  have  more  than  a  notion  where 
the  property's  went  to  if  we  could  tell  the  road  they've  took. 
We  thought  like  enough  some  of  them  might  ha'  come  this  way.  ^* 

Now,  Mr.  Jerry  Dunne  was  not  a  popular  person  in  Lis- 
connel,  where  he  has  even  become,  as  we  have  seen,  proverbial 
for  what  we  call  "  ould  naygurliness.  *^  So  there  was  a  general 
tendency  to  say,  "The  divil's  cure  to  him,"  and  listen  compla- 
cently to  any  details  their  visitors  could  impart.  For  in  his 
private  capacity  a  policeman,  provided  that  he  be  otherwise  "a 
dacint  lad,"  which  to  do  him  justice  is  commonly  the  case,  may 
join,  with  a  few  unobtrusive  restrictions,  in  our  neighborly  gos- 
sips ;    the  rule  in  fact  being  —  Free  admission  except  on  business. 

Only  Mrs.  Kilfoyle  was  so  much  cast  down  by  her  misfortune 
that  she  could  not  raise  herself  to  the  level  of  an  interest  in  the 
affairs  of  her  thrifty  suitor,  and  the  babble  of  voices  relating  and 
commenting  sounded  as  meaningless  as  the  patter  of  the  drops 
which  jumped  like  little  fishes  in  the  large  puddle  at  their  feet. 
It  had  spread  considerably  before  Constable  Black  said  to  his 
comrade :  — 

"  Well,  Daly,  we'd  better  be  steppin'  home  wid  ourselves  as 
wise  as  we  come,  as  the  man  said  when  he'd  axed  his  road  of 
the  ould  black  horse  in  the  dark  lane.  There's  no  good  goin' 
further,  for  the  whole  gang  of  them's  scattered  over  the  counthry 
agin  now  like  a  seedin'  thistle  in  a  high  win'." 


JANE  BARLOW  JCC3 

"Aye,  bedad,"  said  Constable  Daly,  "and  be  the  same  token, 
this  win'  ud  skin  a  tanned  elephant.  It's  on'y  bogged  and 
drenched  we'd  git.  Look  at  what's  comin'  up  over  there.  That 
rain's  snow  on  the  hills,  every  could  drop  of  it;  I  seen  Ben 
Bawn  this  momin'  as  white  as  the  top  of  a  musharoon,  and  it's 
thickenin'  wid  sleet  here  this  minute,  and  so  it  is.^^ 

The  landscape  did,  indeed,  frown  upon  further  explorations. 
In  quarters  where  the  rain  had  abated  it  seemed  as  if  the  mists 
had  curdled  on  the  breath  of  the  bitter  air,  and  they  lay  floating 
in  long  white  bars  and  reefs  low  on  the  track  of  their  own 
shadow,  which  threw  down  upon  the  sombre  bogland  deeper 
stains  of  gloom.  Here  and  there  one  caught  on  the  crest  of 
some  gray-bowldered  knoll,  and  was  teazed  into  fleecy  threads 
that  trailed  melting  instead  of  tangling.  But  toward  the  north 
the  horizon  was  all  blank,  with  one  vast,  smooth  slant  of  slate- 
color,  like  a  pent-house  roof,  which  had  a  sliding  motion  on- 
wards. 

Ody  Rafferty  pointed  to  it  and  said,  "  Troth,  it's  teemin'  pow- 
erful this  instiant  up  there  in  the  mountains.  'Twill  be  much  if 
you  land  home  afore  it's  atop  of  you;  for  'twould  be  the  most  I 
could  do  myself.* 

And  as  the  constables  departed  hastily,  most  people  forgot  the 
stolen  cloak  for  a  while  to  wonder  whether  their  friends  would 
escape  being  entirely  drowned  on  the  way  back  from  the  fair. 

Mrs.  Kilfoyle,  however,  still  stood  in  deep  dejection  at  her 
door,  and  said,  "  Och,  but  she  was  the  great  fool  to  go  let  the 
likes  of  him  set  fut  widin'  her  house.* 

To  console  her  Mrs.  O'Driscoll  said,  "  Ah,  sure,  sorra  a  fool 
were  you,  woman  dear;  how  would  you  know  the  villiny  of  him? 
And  if  you'd  turned  the  man  away  widout  givin'  him  e'er  a  bit, 
it's  bad  you'd  be  thinkin'  of  it  all  the  day  after.* 

And  to  improve  the  occasion  for  her  juniors,  old  Mrs.  Keogh 
added,  "Aye,  and  morebetoken  you'd  ha'  been  committin'  a  sin.* 

But  Mrs.  Kilfoyle  replied  with  much  candor,  "  'Deed,  then, 
I'd  a  dale  liefer  be  after  committin'  a  sin,  or  a  dozen  sins,  than 
to  have  me  poor  mother's  good  cloak  thieved  away  on  me,  and 
walkin'  wild  about  the  world.* 

As   it   happened,   the   fate   of   Mrs.    Kilfoyle's   cloak  was  very 

different  from  her  forecast.     But  I  do  not  think  that  a  knowledge 

of  it  would  have  teen  consolatory  to  her  by  any  means.      If  she 

had  heard  of  it,   she   would   probably  have   said,   "  The   cross   of 

III — 98 


1554 


JANE   BARLOW 


Christ  iipon  us.  God  be  good  to  the  misfort'nit  crathtir. '*  For 
she  was  not  at  all  of  an  implacable  temper,  and  would,  under 
the  circumstances,  have  condoned  even  the  injury  that  obliged 
her  to  appear  at  Mass  with  a  flannel  petticoat  over  her  head 
until  the  end  of  her  days.  Yet  she  did  hold  the  Tinkers  in  a 
perhaps  somewhat  too  unqualified  reprobation.  For  there  are 
tinkers  and  tinkers.  Some  of  them,  indeed,  are  stout  and  sturdy 
thieves, —  veritable  birds  of  prey, — whose  rapacity  is  continually 
questing  for  plunder.  But  some  of  them  have  merely  the  mag- 
pies' and  jackdaws'  thievish  propensity  for  picking  up  what  lies 
temptingly  in  their  way.  And  some  few  are  so  honest  that  they 
pass  by  as  harmlessly  as  a  wedge  of  high-flying  wild  duck.  And 
I  have  heard  it  said  that  to  places  like  Lisconnel  their  pickings 
and  stealings  have  at  worst  never  been  so  serious  a  matter  as 
those  of  another  flock,  finer  of  feather,  but  not  less  predacious 
in  their  habits,  who  roosted,  for  the  most  part,  a  long  way  off, 
and  made  their  collections  by  deputy. 

Copyrighted  1895,  by  Dodd,  Mead  and  Company. 


WALLED  OUT 

From  <Bogland  Studies  > 

An'  wanst  we  were  restin'  a  bit  in  the  sun  on  the  smooth  hillside, 
Where   the    grass   felt   warm   to   your   hand   as   the   fleece  of  a 
sheep,  for  wide. 
As  ye'd  look  overhead  an'  around,   'twas  all  a-blaze  and  a-glow. 
An'  the  blue  was  blinkin'  up  from  the  blackest  bog-holes  below; 

An'  the    scent  o'  the    bogmint  was   sthrong   on    the    air,  an'   never   a 

sound 
But  the  plover's  pipe  that  ye'll  seldom  miss  by  a  lone  bit  o'  ground. 
An'  he  laned  —  Misther  Pierce  —  on  his  elbow,  an'  stared  at  the  sky 

as  he  smoked. 
Till  just  in  an  idle  way  he  sthretched  out  his  hand  an'  sthroked 
The  feathers  o'  wan  of  the  snipe  that  was  kilt  an'  lay  close  by  on 

the  grass; 
An'  there    was   the    death    in    the    crathur's   eyes   like  a  breath  upon 

glass. 

An'  sez  he,  «  It's  quare  to  think  that  a  hole  ye  might  bore  wid  a  pin 
'111  be  wide  enough  to  let  such  a  power  o'  darkness  in 


JANE   BARLOW 


1555 


On  such  a  power  o'  light;  an'  it's  quarer  to  think,*'  sez  he, 

<<That   wan   o'    these    days   the    like   is   bound   to   happen  to  you  an' 

me.** 
Thin  Misther  Barry,  he  sez :   '*  Musha,  how's  wan  to  know  but  there's 

light 
On  t'other  side  o'  the  dark,  as  the  day  comes  afther  the  night?** 
An'  <<Och,**  says  Misther  Pierce,  <<  what  more's  our  knowin' — save  the 

mark  — 
Than  guessin'  which  way  the  chances  run,  an'  thinks  I  they  run  to 

the  dark ; 
Or  else  agin  now  some  glint  of  a  bame'd  ha'  come  slithered  an'  slid; 
Sure  light's  not  aisy  to  hide,  an'  what  for  should  it  be  hid  ?  ** 
Up  he  stood  with  a  sort  o'  laugh:  ^*If  on  light,**  sez  he,  ^^ye're  set. 
Let's  make  the  most  o'  this  same,  as  it's  all  that  we're  like  to  get.** 

Thim  were  his  words,  as  I  minded  well,  for  often  afore  an'  sin, 
The  'dintical  thought  'ud  bother  me  head  that  seemed  to  bother  him 

thin; 
An'  many's  the  time  I'd  be  wond'rin'  whatever  it  all  might  mane. 
The   sky,  an'   the   Ian',  an'  the   bastes,  an'  the   rest   o'  thim  plain  as 

plain, 
And  all  behind  an'  beyant  thim  a  big  black  shadow  let  fall; 
Ye'll   sthrain   the   sight   out  of  your  eyes,  but  there  it  stands  like   a 

wall. 

"An'  there,**  sez  I  to  meself,  "we're  goin'  wherever  we  go, 

But  where  we'll  be  whin  we  git  there  it's  never  a  know  I  know.** 

Thin   whiles   I   thought   I   was   maybe    a    sthookawn   to   throuble   me 

mind 
Wid  sthrivin'  to  comprehind  onnathural  things  o'  the  kind; 
An'   Quality,  now,  that   have   larnin',    might   know   the   rights   o'   the 

case. 
But  ignorant  wans  like  me  had  betther  lave  it  in  pace. 

Priest,  tubbe  sure,  an'  Parson,  accordin'  to  what  they  say. 
The  whole  matther's  plain  as  a  pikestaff  an'  clear  as  the  day. 
An'  to  hear  thim  talk  of  a  world  beyant,  ye'd  think  at  the  laste 
They'd  been   dead    an'   buried   half  their  lives,  an'   had   thramped  it 

from  west  to  aist; 
An'  who's  for   above    an'  who's  for  below  they've  as   pat   as  if  they 

could  tell 
The  name  of  every  saint  in  heaven  an'  every  divil  in  hell. 
But    cock   up   the    lives   of   thimselves    to    be    settlin'    it   all   to   their 

taste  — 
I  sez,  and  the  wife  she  sez  I'm  no  more  nor  a  haythin  baste  — 


1556  JANE   BARLOW 

For  mighty  few  o'  thim's  rael  Quality,  musha,  they're  mostly  a  pack 
O'  playbians,  each   wid   a  tag  to  his  name  an'  a  long  black  coat  to 

his  back; 
An'   it's   on'y   romancin'   they   are   belike;    a    man    must   stick  be  his 

trade, 
An'   they  git  their  livin'  by  lettin'  on  they  know  how  wan's  sowl  is 

made. 

And  in  chapel  or  church  they're  bound  to  know  somethin'  for  sure, 

good  or  bad, 
Or  where'd  be  the  sinse  o'  their  preachin'  an'  prayers  an'  hymns  an' 

howlin'  like  mad  ? 
So  who'd  go  mindin'  o'  thim  ?  barrin'  women,  in  coorse,  an'  wanes. 
That  believe  'most  aught  ye  tell  thim,  if  they  don't  understand  what 

it  manes  — 
Bedad,  if  it  worn't  the  nathur  o'  women  to  want  the  wit, 
Parson  and  Priest  I'm  a-thinkin'  might  shut  up  their  shop  an'  quit. 

But,  och,  it's  lost  an'  disthracted  the  crathurs  'ud  be  without 
Their  bit  of  divarsion  on  Sundays  whin  all  o'  thim  gits  about, 
Cluth'rin'  an'  pluth'rin'  together  like  hins,  an'  a-roostin'  in  rows. 
An'  meetin'  their  frins  an'  their  neighbors,  and  wearin'  their  dacint 

clothes. 
An'  sure  it's  quare  that  the  clergy  can't  ever  agree  to  keep 
Be   tellin'    the   same    thrue   story,    sin'    they    know    such    a   won'erful 

heap; 

For  many  a  thing  Priest  tells  ye  that  Parson  sez  is  a  lie. 

An'  which  has  a  right  to  be  wrong,  the  divil  a  much  know  I, 

For  all  the  differ  I  see  'twixt  the  pair  o'  thim  'd  fit  in  a  nut: 

Wan  for  the  Union,  an'  wan  for  the  League,  an'  both  o'  thim  bitther 

as  sut. 
But  Misther  Pierce,   that's  a  gintleman   born,   an'  has  college  larnin' 

and  all, 
There  he  was  starin'  no  wiser  than  me  where  the  shadow  stands  like 

a  wall. 

Authorized  American  Edition,  Dodd,  Mead  and  Company. 


1557 


JOEL   BARLOW 

(1754-1812) 


^NE  morning  late  in  the  July  of  1778,  a  select  company  gath- 
ered in  the  little  chapel  of  Yale  College  to  listen  to  orations 
and  other  exercises  by  a  picked  number  of  students  of  the 
Senior  class,  one  of  whom,  named  Barlow,  had  been  given  the  coveted 
honor  of  delivering  what  was  termed  the  <  Commencement  Poem.^ 
Those  of  the  audience  who  came  from  a  distance  carried  back  to 
their  homes  in  elm-shaded  Norwich,  or  Stratford,  or  Litchfield,  high 
on  its  hills,  lively  recollections  of  a  hand- 
some young  man  and  of  his  <  Prospect  of 
Peace,*  whose  cheerful  prophecies  in  heroic 
verse  so  greatly  ^* improved  the  occasion.'* 
They  had  heard  that  he  was  a  farmer's  son 
from  Redding,  Connecticut,  who  had  been 
to  school  at  Hanover,  New  Hampshire,  and 
had  entered  Dartmouth  College,  but  soon 
removed  to  Yale  on  account  of  its  superior 
advantages;  that  he  had  twice  seen  active 
service  in  the  Continental  army,  and  that 
he  was  engaged  to  marry  a  beautiful  New 
Haven  girl. 

The  brilliant  career  predicted  for  Bar- 
low did  not  begin  immediately.  Distaste  for 
war,  hope  of  securing  a  tutorship  in  college,  and  —  we  may  well 
believe  —  Miss  Ruth's  entreaties,  kept  him  in  New  Haven  two  years 
longer,  engaged  in  teaching  and  in  various  courses  of  study.  <  The 
Prospect  of  Peace  *  had  been  issued  in  pamphlet  form,  and  the  com- 
pliments paid  the  author  incited  him  to  plan  a  poem  of  a  philosophic 
character  on  the  subject  of  America  at  large,  bearing  the  title  ^  The 
Vision  of  Columbus.*  The  appointment  as  tutor  never  came,  and 
instead  of  cultivating  the  Muse  in  peaceful  New  Haven,  he  was 
forced  to  evoke  her  aid  in  a  tent  on  the  banks  of  the  Hudson, 
Avhither  after  a  hurried  course  in  theology,  he  proceeded  as  an  army 
chaplain  in  1780.  During  his  connection  with  the  army,  which 
lasted  until  its  disbandment  in  1783,  he  won  repute  by  lyrics  written 
to  encourage  the  soldiers,  and  by  <<a  flaming  political  sermon,**  as  he 
termed  it,  on  the  treason  of  Arnold. 

Army  life  ended.    Barlow  removed  to   Hartford,   where  he  studied 
law,   edited  the  American  Mercury, — a  weekly   paper  he  had  helped 


Joel   Barlow 


1558  JOEL  BARLOW 

to  found,  —  and  with  John  Trumbtill,  Lemuel  Hopkins,  and  David 
Humphrej^s  formed  a  literary  club  which  became  widely  known  as 
the  <^  Hartford  Wits.^*  Its  chief  publication,  a  series  of  political  lam- 
poons styled  <  The  Anarchiad,^  satirized  those  factions  whose  disputes 
imperiled  the  young  republic,  and  did  much  to  influence,  public  opin- 
ion in  Connecticut  and  elsewhere  in  favor  of  the  Federal  Constitution. 
A  revision  and  enlargement  of  Dr.  Watts's  <  Book  of  Psalmody,  >  and 
the  publication  (1787)  of  his  own  <  Vision  of  Columbus,  >  occupied 
part  of  Barlow's  time  while  in  Hartford.  The  latter  poem  was 
extravagantly  praised,  ran  through  several  editions,  and  was  repub- 
lished in  London  and  Paris;  but  the  poet,  who  now  had  a  wife  to 
support,  could  not  live  by  his  pen  nor  by  the  law,  and  when  in  1788 
he  was  urged  by  the  Scioto  Land  Company  to  become  its  agent  in 
Paris,  he  gladly  accepted.  The  company  was  a  private  association, 
formed  to  buy  large  tracts  of  government  land  situated  in  Ohio  and 
sell  them  in  Europe  to  capitalists  or  actual  settlers.  This  failed  dis- 
astrously, and  Barlow  was  left  stranded  in  Paris,  where  he  remained, 
supporting  himself  partly  by  writing,  partly  by  business  ventures. 
Becoming  intimate  with  the  leaders  of  the  Girondist  party,  the  man 
who  had  dedicated  his  ^Vision  of  Columbus'  to  Louis  XVL,  and 
had  also  dined  with  the  nobility,  now  began  to  figure  as  a  zealous 
Republican  and  as  a  Liberal  in  religion.  From  1790  to  1793  he 
passed  most  of  his  time  in  London,  where  he  wrote  a  number  of 
political  pamphlets  for  the  Society  for  Constitutional  Information,  an 
organization  openly  favoring  French  Republicanism  and  a  revision  of 
the  British  Constitution,  Here  also,  in  1791,  he  finished  a  work 
entitled  *  Advice  to  the  Privileged  Orders,  >  which  probably  would 
have  run  through  many  editions  had  it  not  been  suppressed  by  the 
British  government.  The  book  was  an  arraignment  of  tyranny  in 
church  and  state,  and  was  quickly  followed  by  <  The  Conspiracy  of 
Kings,'  an  attack  in  verse  on  those  European  countries  which  had 
combined  to  kill  Republicanism  in  France.  In  1792  Barlow  was 
made  a  citizen  of  France  as  a  mark  of  appreciation  of  a  <  Letter  * 
addressed  to  the  National  Convention,  giving  that  body  advice,  and 
when  the  convention  sent  commissioners  to  organize  the  province  of 
Savoy  into  a  department.  Barlow  was  one  of  the  number.  As  a 
candidate  for  deputy  from  Savoy,  he  was  defeated;  but  his  visit  was 
not  fruitless,  for  at  Chambery  the  sight  of  a  dish  of  maize-meal  por- 
ridge reminded  him  of  his  early  home  in  Connecticut,  and  inspired 
him  to  write  in  that  ancient  French  town  a  typical  Yankee  poem, 
*  Hasty  Pudding.'  Its  preface,  in  prose,  addressed  to  Mrs.  Washing- 
ton, assured  her  that  simplicity  of  diet  was  one  of  the  virtues;  and 
if  cherished  b}^  her,  as  it  doubtless  was,  it  would  be  more  highly 
regarded  by  her  countrywomen. 


JOEL  BARLOW  i^^g 

Between  the  years  of  1795-97,  Barlow  held  the  important  but 
unenviable  position  of  United  States  Consul  at  Algiers,  and  succeeded 
both  in  liberating  many  of  his  countrymen  who  were  held  as  prison- 
ers, and  in  perfecting  treaties  with  the  rulers  of  the  Barbary  States, 
which  gave  United  States  vessels  entrance  to  their  ports  and  secured 
them  from  piratical  attacks.  On  his  return  to  Paris  he  translated 
Volney's  ^  Ruins  ^  into  English,  made  preparations  for  writing  his- 
tories of  the  American  and  French  revolutions,  and  expanded  his 
< Vision  of  Columbus'  into  a  volume  which  as  <The  Columbiad'  —  a 
beautiful  specimen  of  typography  —  was  published  in  Philadelphia  in 
1807  and  republished  in  London.  The  poem  was  held  to  have;  in- 
creased Barlow's  fame ;  but  it  is  stilted  and  monotonous,  and  *■  Hasty 
Pudding'  has  done  more  to  perpetuate  his  name. 

In  1805  Barlow  returned  to  the  United  States  and  bought  an 
estate  near  Washington,  D.  C,  where  he  entertained  distinguished 
visitors.  In  181 1  he  returned  to  France  authorized  to  negotiate  a 
treaty  of  commerce.  After  waiting  nine  months,  he  was  invited  by 
Napoleon,  who  was  then  in  Poland,  to  a  conference  at  Wilna.  On 
his  arrival  Barlow  found  the  French  army  on  the  retreat  from  Mos- 
cow, and  endured  such  privations  on  the  march  that  on  December 
24th  he  died  of  exhaustion  at  the  village  of  Zarnowiec,  near  Cracow, 
and  there  was  buried. 

Barlow's  part  in  developing  American  literature  was  important, 
and  therefore  he  has  a  rightful  place  in  a  work  which  traces  that 
development.  He  certainly  was  a  man  of  varied  ability  and  power, 
who  advanced  more  than  one  good  cause  and  stimulated  the  move- 
ment toward  higher  thought.  The  only  complete  ^  Life  and  Letters 
of  Joel  Barlow,'  by  Charles  Burr  Todd,  published  in  1888,  gives  him 
unstinted  praise  as  excelling  in  statesmanship,  letters,  and  philosophy. 
With  more  assured  justice,  which  all  can  echo,  it  praises  his  nobility 
of  spirit  as  a  man.  No  one  can  read  the  letter  to  his  wife,  written 
from  Algiers  when  he  thought  himself  in  danger  of  death,  without  a 
warm  feeling  for  so  unselfish  and  affectionate  a  nature. 


A   FEAST 
From  <  Hasty  Pudding* 

There  are  various  ways  of  preparing  and  eating  Hasty  Pudding, 
with  molasses,  butter,  sugar,  cream,  and  fried.  Why  so  excellent  a 
thing  cannot  be  eaten  alone  ?  Nothing  is  perfect  alone ;  even  man, 
who  boasts  of  so  much  perfection,  is  nothing  without  his  fellow-sub- 
stance. In  eating,  beware  of  the  lurking  heat  that  lies  deep  in  the 
mass;    dip    your    spoon    gently,    take    shallow    dips    and    cool    it    by 


jc6o  JOEL   BARLOW 

degrees.  It  is  sometimes  necessary  to  blow.  This  is  indicated  by- 
certain  signs  which  every  experienced  feeder  knows.  They  should 
be  taught  to  young  beginners.  I  have  known  a  child's  tongue  blis- 
tered for  want  of  this  attention,  and  then  the  school-dame  would 
insist  that  the  poor  thing  had  told  a  lie.  A  mistake:  the  falsehood 
was  in  the  faithless  pudding.  A  prudent  mother  will  cool  it  for  her 
child  with  her  own  sweet  breath.  The  husband,  seeing  this,  pre- 
tends his  own  wants  blowing,  too,  from  the  same  lips.  A  sly  deceit 
of  love.  She  knows  the  cheat,  but,  feigning  ignorance,  lends  her 
pouting  lips  and  gives  a  gentle  blast,  which  warms  the  husband's 
heart  more  than  it  cools  his  pudding. 

THE  days  grow  short;   but  thovigh  the  falling  sun 
To  the  glad  swain  proclaims  his  day's  work  done, 
Night's  pleasing  shades  his  various  tasks  prolong, 
And  yield  new  subjects  to  my  various  song. 
For  now,  the  corn-house  filled,  the  harvest  home, 
The  invited  neighbors  to  the  husking  come; 
A  frolic  scene,  where  work  and  mirth  and  play 
Unite  tlieir  charms  to  chase  the  hours  away. 

Where  the  huge  heap  lies  centred  in  the  hall, 
The  lamp  suspended  from  the  cheerful  wall, 
Brown  corn-fed  nymphs,  and  strong  hard-handed  beaux, 
Alternate  ranged,  extend  in  circling  rows. 
Assume  their  seats,  the  solid  mass  attack; 
The  dry  husks  rustle,  and  the  corn-cobs  crack; 
The  song,  the  laugh,  alternate  notes  resound. 
And  the  sweet  cider  trips  in  silence  round. 

The  laws  of  husking  every  wight  can  tell; 
And  sure,  no  laws  he  ever  keeps  so  well : 
For  each  red  ear  a  general  kiss  he  gains, 
With  each  smut  ear  he  smuts  the  luckless  swains; 
But  when  to  some  sweet  maid  a  prize  is  cast. 
Red  as  her  lips,  and  taper  as  her  waist, 
She  walks  the  round,  and  culls  one  favored  beau. 
Who  leaps,  the  luscious  tribute  to  bestow. 
Various  the  sport,  as  are  the  wits  and  brains 
Of  well-pleased  lasses  and  contending  swains; 
Till  the  vast  mound  of  corn  is  swept  away, 
And  he  that  gets  the  last  ear  wins  the  day. 

Meanwhile  the  housewife  urges  all  her  care. 
The  well-earned  feast  to  hasten  and  prepare. 
The  sifted  meal  already  waits  her  hand, 
The  milk  is  strained,  the  bowls  in  order  stand, 


JOEL  BARLOW  1561 

The  fire  flames  high;    and  as  a  pool  (that  takes 
The  headlong  stream  that  o'er  the  mill-dam  breaks) 
Foams,  roars,  and  rages  with  incessant  toils, 
So  the  vexed  caldron  rages,  roars  and  boils. 

First  with  clean  salt  she  seasons  well  the  food, 
Then  strews  the  flour,  and  thickens  well  the  flood. 
Long  o'er  the  simmering  fire  she  lets  it  stand; 
To  stir  it  well  demands  a  stronger  hand: 
The  husband  takes  his  turn,  and  round  and  round 
The  ladle  flies;   at  last  the  toil  is  crowned; 
When  to  the  board  the  thronging  buskers  pour, 
And  take  their  seats  as  at  the  corn  before. 

I  leave  them  to  their  feast.     There  still  belong 
More  useful  matters  to  my  faithful  song. 
For  rules  there  are,  though  ne'er  unfolded  yet, 
Nice  rules  and  wise,  how  pudding  should  be  atq. 

Some  with  molasses  grace  the  luscious  treat, 
And  mix,  like  bards,  the  useful  and  the  sweet; 
A  wholesome  dish,  and  well  deserving  praise, 
A  great  resource  in  those  bleak  wintry  days. 
When  the  chilled  earth  lies  buried  deep  in  snow, 
And  raging  Boreas  dries  the  shivering  cow. 

Blest  cow!   thy  praise  shall  still  my  notes  employ, 
Great  source  of  health,  the  only  source  of  joy; 
Mother  of  Egypt's  god,  but  sure,  for  me, 
Were  I  to  leave  my  God,  I'd  worship  thee. 
How  oft  thy  teats  these  pious  hands  have  pressed! 
How  oft  thy  bounties  prove  my  only  feast! 
How  oft  I've  fed  thee  with  my  favorite  grain! 
And  roared,  like  thee,  to  see  thy  children  slain. 

Ye  swains  who  know  her  various  worth  to  prize, 
Ah!   house  her  well  from  winter's  angry  skies. 
Potatoes,  pumpkins,  should  her  sadness  cheer. 
Corn  from  your  crib,  and  mashes  from  your  beer; 
When  spring  returns,  she'll  well  acquit  the  loan, 
And  nurse  at  once  your  infants  and  her  own. 

Milk,  then,  with  pudding  I  should  always  choose 
To  this  in  future  I  confine  my  muse. 
Till  she  in  haste  some  further  hints  unfold, 
Good  for  the  young,  nor  useless  to  the  old. 
First  in  your  bowl  the  milk  abundant  take, 
Then  drop  with  care  along  the  silver  lake 
Your  flakes  of  pudding:  these  at  first  will  hide 
Their  little  bulk  beneath  the  swelling  tide; 


ic62  JOEL  BARLOW 

But  when  their  growing  mass  no  more  can  sink, 
When  the  soft  island  looms  above  the  brink, 
Then  check  your  hand;  you've  got  the  portion  due, 
So  taught  my  sire,  and  what  he  taught  is  true. 

There  is  a  choice  in  spoons.     Though  small  appear 
The  nice  distinction,  yet  to  me  'tis  clear. 
The  deep-bowled  Gallic  spoon,  contrived  to  scoop 
In  ample  draughts  the  thin  diluted  soup, 
Performs  not  well  in  those  substantial  things, 
Whose  mass  adhesive  to  the  metal  clings; 
Where  the  strong  labial  muscles  must  embrace 
The  gentle  curve,  and  sweep  the  hollow  space. 
With  ease  to  enter  and  discharge  the  freight, 
A  bowl  less  concave,  but  still  more  dilate. 
Becomes  the  pudding  best.     The  shape,  the  size, 
A  secret  rests,  unknown  to  vulgar  eyes. 
Experienced  feeders  can  alone  impart 
A  rule  so  much  above  the  lore  of  art. 
These  tuneful  lips  that  thousand  spoons  have  tried, 
With  just  precision  could  the  point  decide. 
Though  not  in  song  —  the  muse  but  poorly  shines 
In  cones,  and  cubes,  and  geometric  lines; 
Yet  the  true  form,  as  near  as  she  can  tell, 
Is  that  small  section  of  a  goose-egg  shell, 
Which  in  two  equal  portions  shall  divide 
The  distance  from  the,  centre  to  the  side. 

Fear  not  to  slaver ;  'tis  no  deadly  sin ;  — 
Like  the  free  Frenchman,  from  your  joyous  chin 
Suspend  the  ready  napkin ;  or  like  me. 
Poise  with  one  hand  your  bowl  upon  your  knee; 
Just  in  the  zenith  your  wise  head  project, 
Your  full  spoon  rising  in  a  line  direct. 
Bold  as  a  bucket,  heed  no  drops  that  fall. 
The  wide-mouthed  bowl  will  surely  catch  them  all. 


1563 


WILLIAM   BARNES 

(1 800-1 886) 

!ad  he  chosen  to  write  solely  in  familiar  English,  rather  than 
in  the  dialect  of  his  native  Dorsetshire,  every  modern  an- 
thology would  be  graced  by  the  verses  of  William  Barnes, 
and  to  multitudes  who  now  know  him  not,  his  name  would  have 
become  associated  with  many  a  country  sight  and  sound.  Other 
poets  have  taken  homely  subjects  for  their  themes, — the  hay  field, 
the  chimney-nook,  milking-time,  the  blossoming  of  « high-boughed 
hedges";  but  it  is  not  every  one  who  has  sung  out  of  the  fullness  of 
his  heart  and  with  a  naive  delight  in  that  of  which  he  sung:  and  so 
by  reason  of  their  faithfulness  to  every-day  life  and  to  nature,  and 
by  their  spontaneity  and  tenderness,  his  lyrics,  fables,  and  eclogues 
appeal  to  cultivated  readers  as  well  as  to  the  rustics  whose  quaint 
speech  he  made  his  own. 

Short  and  simple  are  the  annals  of  his  life;  for,  a  brief  period 
excepted,  it  was  passed  in  his  native  county  —  though  Dorset,  for 
all  his  purposes,  was  as  wide  as  the  world  itself.  His  birthplace  was 
Bagbere  in  the  vale  of  Blackmore,  far  up  the  valley  of  the  Stour, 
where  his  ancestors  had  been  freeholders.  The  death  of  his  parents 
while  he  was  a  boy  threw  him  on  his  own  resources;  and  while  he 
was  at  school  at  Sturminster  and  Dorchester  he  supported  himself  by 
clerical  work  in  attorneys'  offices.  After  he  left  school  his  education 
was  mainly  self-gained;  but  it  was  so  thorough  that  in  1827  he 
became  master  of  a  school  at  Mere,  Wilts,  and  in  1835  opened  a 
boarding-school  in  Dorchester,  which  he  conducted  for  a  number  of 
years.  A  little  later  he  spent  a  few  terms  at  Cambridge,  and  in 
1847  received  ordination.  From  that  time  until  his  death  in  1886, 
most  of  his  days  were  spent  in  the  little  parishes  of  Whitcombe  and 
Winterbourne  Came,  near  Dorchester,  where  his  duties  as  rector  left 
him  plenty  of  time  to  spend  on  his  favorite  studies.  To  the  last, 
Barnes  wore  the  picturesque  dress  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  to 
the  tourist  he  became  almost  as  much  a  curiosity  as  the  relics  of 
Roman  occupation  described  in  a  guide-book  he  compiled. 

When  one  is  at  the  same  time  a  linguist,  a  musician,  an  antiquary, 
a  profound  student  of  philology,  and  skilled  withal  in  the  graphic 
arts,  it  would  seem  inevitable  that  he  should  have  more  than  a  local 
reputation;  but  when,  in  1844,  a  thin  volume  entitled  < Poems  of 
Rural  Life  in  the  Dorset  Dialect*  appeared  in  London,  few  bookshop 


1564 


WILLIAM   BARNES 


frequenters  had  ever  heard  of  the  author.  But  he  was  already 
well  known  throughout  Dorset,  and  there  he  was  content  to  be 
known;  a  welcome  guest  in  castle  and  hall,  but  never  happier 
than  when,  gathering  about  him  the  Jobs  and  Lettys  with  whom 
Thomas  Hardy  has  made  us  familiar,  he  delighted  their  ears  by  recit- 
ing his  verses.  The  dialect  of  Dorset,  he  boasted,  was  the  least 
corrupted  form  of  English ;  therefore  to  commend  it  as  a  vehicle  of 
expression  and  to  help  preserve  his  mother  tongue  from  corruption, 
and  to  purge  it  of  words  not  of  Anglo-Saxon  or  Teutonic  origin,  — 
this  was  one  of  the  dreams  of  his  life, — he  put  his  impressions  of 
rural  scenery  and  his  knowledge  of  human  character  into  metrical 
form.  He  is  remembered  by  scholars  here  and  there  for  a  number 
of  works  on  philology,  and  one  (*  Outline  of  English  Speech-Craft ') 
in  which,  with  zeal,  but  with  the  battle  against  him,  he  aimed  to 
teach  the  English  language  by  using  words  of  Teutonic  derivation 
only;  but  it  is  through  his  four  volumes  of  poems  that  he  is  better 
remembered.  These  include  <  Hwomely  Rhymes*  (1859),  <Poems  of 
Rural  Life*  (1862),  and  *  Poems  of  Rural  Life  in  Common  English* 
(1863).  The  three  collections  of  dialect  poems  were  brought  out  in 
one  volume,   with  a  glossary,  in   1879. 

"A  poet  fresh  as  the  dew,**  <*  The  first  of  English  purely  pastoral 
poets,**  "The  best  writer  of  eclogues  since  Theocritus,'*  —  these  are 
some  of  the  tardy  tributes  paid  him.  With  a  sympathy  for  his  fel- 
low-man and  a  humor  akin  to  that  of  Burns,  with  a  feeling  for  nature 
as  keen  as  Wordsworth's,  though  less  subjective,  and  with  a  power 
of  depicting  a  scene  with  a  few  well-chosen  epithets  which  recalls 
Tennyson,  Barnes  has  fairly  earned  his  title  to  remembrance. 

*The  Life  of  William  Barnes,  Poet  and  Philologist,*  written  by 
his  daughter,  Mrs.  Baxter,  was  published  in  1887.  There  are  numer- 
ous articles  relating  to  him  in  periodical  literature,  one  of  which,  a 
sketch  by  Thomas  Hardy,  in  Vol.  86  of  the  <  Athenaeum,*  is  of  peculiar 
interest. 


WILLIAM   BARNES  1565 

BLACKMWORE   MAIDENS 

THE  primrwose  in  the  sheade  do  blow. 
The  cowslip  in  the  zun, 
The  thyme  upon  the  down  do  grow, 
The  clote  where  streams  do  run; 
An'  where  do  pretty  maidens  grow 
An'  blow,  but  where  the  tow'r 
Do  rise  among  the  bricken  tuns, 
In  Blackmwore  by  the  Stour? 

if  you  could  zee  their  comely  gait. 

An'  pretty  feaces'  smiles, 
A-trippen  on  so  light  o'  waight. 

An'  steppen  off  the  stiles; 
A-gwain  to  church,  as  bells  do  swing 

An'  ring  'ithin  the  tow'r, 
You'd  own  the  pretty  maidens'  pleace 

Is  Blackmwore  by  the  Stour? 

If  you  vrom  Wimborne  took  your  road. 

To  Stower  or  Paladore, 
An'  all  the  farmers'  housen  show'd 

Their  daughters  at  the  door; 
You'd  cry  to  bachelors  at  hwome  — 

«  Here,   come :  'ithin  an  hour 
You'll  vind  ten  maidens  to  your  mind, 

In  Blackmwore  by  the  Stour.* 

An'  if  you  look'd  'ithin  their  door, 

To  zee  em  in  their  pleace, 
A-doen  housework  up  avore 

Their  smilen  mother's  feace ; 
You'd  cry, — «  Why,  if  a  man  would  wive 

An'  thrive,   'ithout  a  dow'r, 
Then  I'et  en  look  en  out  a  wife 

In  Blackmwore  by  the  Stour." 

As  I  upon  my  road  did  pass 

A  school-house  back  in  May, 
There  out  upon  the  beaten  grass 

Wer  maidens  at  their  play; 
An'  as  the  pretty  souls  did  tweil 

An'  smile,  I  cried,  « The  flow'r 
O'  beauty,  then,  is  still  in  bud 

In  ■  Blackmwore  by  the  Stour.* 


1^66 


WILLIAM   BARNES 


MAY 


Come  out  o'  door,  'tis  Spring!    'tis  May! 
The  trees  be  green,  the  yields  be  gay? 
The  weather's  warm,  the  winter  blast, 
Wi'  all  his  train  o'  clouds,  is  past; 
The  zun  do  rise  while  vo'k  do  sleep, 
To  teake  a  higher  daily  zweep, 
Wi'  cloudless  feace  a-flingen  down 
His  sparklen  light  upon  the  groun'. 
The  air's  a-streamen  soft, — come  drow 
The  windor  open;   let  it  blow 
In  drough  the  house,  where  vire,  an'  door 
A-shut,  kept  out  the  cwold  avore. 
Come,  let  the  vew  dull  embers  die. 
An'  come  below  the  open  sky; 
An'  wear  your  best,  vor  fear  the  groim' 
In  colors  gay  mid  sheame  your  gown: 
An'  goo  an'  rig  wi'  me  a  mile 
Or  two  up  over  geate  an'  stile, 
Drough  zunny  parrocks  that  do  lead, 
Wi'  crooked  hedges,  to  the  mead. 
Where  elems  high,  in  steately  ranks, 
Do  rise  vrom  yollow  cowslip-banks. 
An'  birds  do  twitter  vrom  the  spray 
O'  bushes  deck'd  wi'  snow-white  may; 
An'  gil'  cups,  wi'  the  deaisy  bed, 
Be  under  ev'ry  step  you  tread. 
We'll  wind  up  rotm'  the  hill,  an'  look 
All  down  the  thickly  timber'd  nook, 
Out  where  the  squier's  house  do  show 
His  gray-walled  peaks  up  drough  the  row 
O'  sheady  elems,  where  the  rock 
Do  build  her  nest;    an'  where  the  brook 
Do  creep  along  the  meads,  an'  lie 
To  catch  the  brightness  o'  the  sky; 
An'  cows,  in  water  to  their  knees. 
Do  Stan'  a-whisken  off  the  vices. 
Mother  o'  blossoms,  and  ov  all 
That's  feair  a-vield  vrom  Spring  till  Fall, 
The  gookoo  over  white-weav'd     seas 
Do  come  to  zing  in  thy  green  trees, 
An'  buttervlees,  in  giddy  flight, 
Do  gleam  the  mwost  by  thy  gay  light. 


WILLIAM   BARNES 

Oh !   when,  at  last,  my  fleshly  eyes 
Shall  shut  upon  the  vields  an'  skies, 
Mid  zummer's  zunny  days  be  gone, 
An'  winter's  clouds  be  comen  on: 
Nor  mid  I  draw  upon  the  e'th, 
O'  thy  sweet  air  my  leatest  breath; 
Alassen  I  mid  want  to  stay 
Behine'  for  thee,  O  flow'ry  May! 


MILKEN   TIME 

<  Poems  of  Rural  Life  > 

•  TT^WER  when  the  busy  birds  did  vlee, 

I       Wi'  sheenen  wings,  vrom  tree  to  tree. 
To  build  upon  the  mossy  lim' 
Their  hollow  nestes'  rounded  rim; 
The  while  the  zun,   a-zinken  low. 
Did  roll  along  his  evenen  bow, 
I  come  along  where  wide-horn'd  cows, 
'Ithin  a  nook,   a-screen'd  by  boughs. 
Did  Stan'  an'  flip  the  white-hooped  pails 
Wi'  heairy  tufts  o'  swingen  tails; 
An'  there  were  Jenny  Coom  a-gone 
Along  the  path  a  vew  steps  on, 
A-bearen  on  her  head,  upstraight. 
Her  pail,   wf  slowly-riden  waight. 
An  hoops  a-sheenen,   lily-white, 
Agean  the  evenen's  slanten  light; 
An'  zo  I  took  her  pail,   an'  left 
Her  neck  a-freed  vrom  all  his  heft; 
An'  she  a-looken  up  an'  down, 
Wi'  sheaply  head  an'  glossy  crown. 
Then  took  my  zide,  an'  kept  my  peace, 
A-talken  on  wi'  smilen  feace. 
An'  zetten  things  in  sich  a  light, 
I'd  fain  ha'  hear'd  her  talk  all  night; 
An'  when  I  brought  her  milk  avore 
The  geate,  she  took  it  in  to  door, 
An'  if  her  pail  had  but  allow'd 
Her  head  to  vail,  she  would  ha'  bow'd; 
An'  still,  as  'twer,  I  had  the  zight 
Ov'  her  sweet  smile,  droughout  the  night. 


IS^*? 


1568 


WILLIAM   BARNES 


JESSIE    LEE 

ABOVE  the  timber's  benden  sh'ouds, 
The  western  wind  did  softly  blow; 
An'  up  avore  the  knap,  the  clouds 
Did  ride  as  white  as  driven  snow. 
Vrom  west  to  east  the  clouds  did  zwim 
Wi'  wind  that  plied  the  elem's  lim' ; 
Vrom  west  to  east  the  stream  did  glide, 
A  sheenen  wide,  wi'  winden  brim. 

How  feair,  I  thought,  avore  the  sky 
The  slowly-zwimmen  clouds  do  look; 

How  soft  the  win's  a-streamen  by; 

How  bright  do  roll  the  weavy  brook: 

When  there,   a-passen  on  my  right, 

A-walken  slow,   an'  treaden  light, 
Young  Jessie  Lee  come  by,  an'  there 

Took  all  my  ceare,  an'  all  my  zight. 

Vor  lovely  wer  the  looks  her  feace 
Held  up  avore  the  western  sky: 

An'  comely  wer  the  steps  her  peace 
Did  meake  a-walken  slowly  by: 

But  I  went  east,  wi'  beaten  breast, 

Wi'  wind,  an'  cloud,  an'  brook,  vor  rest, 
Wi'  rest  a-lost,  vor  Jessie  gone 

So  lovely  on,  toward  the  west. 

Blow  on,   O  winds,  athirt  the  hill; 

Zwim  on,   O  clouds;  O  waters  vail, 
Down  maeshy  rocks,  vrom  mill  to  mill: 

I  now  can  overlook  ye  all. 
But  roll,  O  zun,  an'  bring  to  me 
My  day,  if  such  a  day  there  be, 
When  zome  dear  path  to  my  abode 
Shall  be  the  road  o'  Jessie  Lee. 


WILLIAM   BARNES 


THE  TURNSTILE 


1569 


AH !  SAD  wer  we  as  we  did  peace 
The  wold  church  road,  wi'  downcast  feace, 
The  while  the  bells,  that  mwoan'd  so  deep 
Above  our  child  a-left  asleep, 
Wer  now  a-zingen  all  alive 
Wi'  tother  bells  to  meake  the  vive. 
But  up  at  woone  pleace  we  come  by, 
'Twere  hard  to  keep  woone's  two  eyes  dry; 
On  Stean-cliff  road,   'ithin  the  drong, 
Up  where,  as  vo'k  do  pass  along. 
The  turnen  stile,  a-painted  white, 
Do  sheen  by  day  an'  show  by  night. 
Vor  always  there,  as  we  did  goo 
To  church,  thik  stile  did  let  us  drough, 
Wi'  spreaden  earms  that  wheel 'd  to  guide 
Us  each  in  turn  to  tother  zide. 
An'  vu'st  ov  all  the  train  he  took 
My  wife,  wi'  winsome  gait  an'  look; 
An'  then  zent  on  my  little  maid, 
A-skippen  onward,   overjay'd 
To  reach  agean  the  pleace  o'  pride, 
Her  comely  mother's  left  h'an'  zide. 
An'  then,  a-wheelen  roun'  he  took 
On  me,   'ithin  his  third  white  nook. 
An'  in  the  fourth,  a-sheaken  wild. 
He  zent  us  on  our  giddy  child. 
But  eesterday  he  guided  slow 
My  downcast  Jenny,  vull  o'  woe. 
An'  then  my  little  maid  in  black, 
A-walken  softly  on  her  track; 
An'  after  he'd  a-turn'd  agean. 
To  let  me  goo  along^  the  leane, 
He  had  noo  little  bwoy  to  vill 
His  last  white  earms,  an'  they  stood  still. 


111—99 


1570  WILLIAM   BARNES 


TO   THE   WATER-CROWFOOT 

Osmall-feac'd  flow'r  that  now  dost  bloom, 
To  stud  wi'  white  the  shallow  Frome, 
An'  leave  the  *clote  to  spread  his  flow'r 
On  darksome  pools  o'  stwoneless  Stour, 
When  sof'ly-rizen  airs  do  cool 
The  water  in  the  sheenen  pool, 
Thy  beds  o'  snow  white  buds  do  gleam 
So  feair  upon  the  sky-blue  stream. 
As  whitest  clouds,  a-hangen  high 
Avore  the  blueness  of  the  sky. 

*The  yellow  water-lily. 


ZUMMER  AN'   WINTER 

WHEN  I  led  by  zummer  streams 
The  pride  o'  Lea,  as  naighbours  thought  her, 
While  the  zun,   wi'  evenen  beams, 
Did  cast  our  sheades  athirt  the  water: 
Winds  a-blowen. 
Streams  a-flowen, 
Skies  a-glowen. 
Tokens  ov  my  jay  zoo  fleeten, 
Heightened  it,  that  happy  meeten. 

Then,  when  maid  and  man  took  pleiices, 

Gay  in  winter's  Chris'mas  dances, 
Showen  in  their  merry  feaces 

Kindly  smiles  an'  glisnen  glances: 
Stars  a-winken. 
Days  a-shrinken, 
Sheades  a-zinken. 
Brought  anew  the  happy  meeten. 
That  did  meake  the  night  too  fleeten. 


i57oa 


MAURICE  BARRES 

(1862-) 

BY   PIERRE  DE   BACOURT 

AURICE  Barres  was  born  at  Charmcs-sur-Moselle  of  a  mother  of 
pure  Lorraine  race  and  of  a  father  whose  remoter  family 
origin  could  be  traced  to  Auvergne.  His  grandfather,  a 
captain  iii  the  light  infantry  of  the  Guard,  was  one  of  the  «grognards)) 
(grumblers)  of  the  Great  Emperor.  During  the  Franco-German  war 
of  1870  the  old  soldier,  taken  as  a  hostage  by  the  invaders  of  Lorraine, 
died  of  maltreatment  in  some  unknown  corner  of  the  desolated  province. 
The  scenes  of  slaughter  and  devastation,  of  which  the  child  was  the 
terrified  eye-witness  at  that  time,  made  an  indelible  impression  upon  his 
mind.  Brought  up  in  a  region  rent  and  ruined  by  a  crushing  defeat,  he 
grew  up  in  an  atmosphere  of  sadness.  He  first  studied  at  the  Malgrange 
College  in  the  suburbs  of  Nancy  and  later  in  the  lycee  of  the  same  town. 
A  frail  and  oversensitive  child,  he  suffered  from  and  resented  the  rough- 
ness of  his  schoolmates;  besides,  the  dry  or  formal  teaching  he  received 
was  not  suited  to  such  an  independent  and  inquisitive  mind,  so  that  his 
college  memories  were  tainted  with  bitterness. 

His  family  wished  him  to  become  a  magistrate.  In  1880  he  began  to 
study  law,  but  Flaubert,  ^Montesquieu,  d'Aubigne,  and  many  other 
thinkers  attracted  him  a  great  deal  more  than  the  civil  or  the  penal  code. 
He  contributed  irregularly  to  La  Jeune  France.  M.  Allenet,  director  of 
that  periodical,  showed  some  of  the  young  man's  manuscripts  to  Anatole 
France  and  to  Leconte  de  Lisle,  who  advised  him  to  come  to  Paris.  His 
essays  not  being  always  accepted  by  the  editors,  as  he  thought  they 
should  have  been,  he  began  in  1884  to  publish  himself  (Les  Taches 
d'Encre)  (The  Ink  Blots),  which  lasted  little  more  than  a  year,  but 
helped  him  to  gain  admission  to  the  leading  dailies  and  periodicals. 
In  1884,  in  collaboration  with  Charles  Le  Gofiic,  he  started  another 
review,  >(Les  Chroniques,)'  which  was  also  shortlived.  This  time  it  was 
not  to  help  the  printing  of  his  own  prose  but  the  verse  of  another,  Jules 
Tellier,  the  charming  symbolist  poet,  who  died  too  soon  to  give  the  real 
measure  of  his  talent.  Late  in  1887  his  first  book,  (Sous  I'CEil  des 
Barbares,)  was  published,  and  in  the  early  days  of  1888  a  remarkable 
article  by  Paul  Bourget  in  Le  Journal  des  Debats  forced  it  upon  the 
attention  of  the  elite.  At  his  first  attempt  Maurice  Barres  had  attained 
fame.     With    (L'Homme   Libre)    (1889)    and    (Le   Jardin  de   Berenice)^ 


I57ob  MAURICE    BARRES 

(1891)  this  book  forms  a  trilogy — <Le  Culte  du  Moi> — the  cult  of  self  or 
the  cult  of  the  ego. 

To  analyze  these  works  is,  to  say  the  least,  difficult;  they  have  no 
plot,  few  episodes,  and  although  the  connection  between  the  various 
parts  is,  on  the  whole,  quite  logical,  the  thread  is  difficult  to  follow.  The 
'(Culte  du  Moi)  is  a  series  of  essays  on  the  philosophical  doctrine  of  the 
author  and  on  his  interpretation  of  life;  he  has  himself  called  the  series 
one  of  metaphysical  novels.  If  the  qualifying  adjective  «  metaphysical  » 
is  justified,  the  same  cannot  be  said  of  the  substantive — for  these  books 
are  not  novels.  Psychology  plays  an  important  part  in  them  but  it  is 
neither  Taine's  nor  Bourget's;  there  is  little  analysis  and  much 
description. 

Philip,  the  hero  and  practically  the  only  character,  has  finished  his 
studies  in  a  provincial  college.  In  the  mind  of  this  twenty-year-old 
boy  the  influences  of  literary  Romanticism  and  Kantian  philosophy  are 
easily  discernible.  In  him,  religion,  ethics,  sentiment  of  nationality 
have  been  destroyed,  and  the  teachings  of  his  masters  have  been  power- 
less to  reconstruct  any  rule  of  life,  so  that  he  is  content  to  hold  to  the 
only  reality  that,  in  his  eyes,  indubitably  exists:  his  ego.  Self-knowledge, 
self-culture,  will  be  the  ultimate  goal  of  his  efforts.  But  disturbing 
influences  hinder  him  in  his  studies;  he  shuts  like  Vigny  the  door  of  his 
Hour  d'ivoire>'>  against  the  Barbarians  of  the  external  world  and  tries 
to  avoid  all  contact  with  them.  This  proves  to  be  a  hard  task,  for  life 
in  society  is  made  up  of  intercourse  with  others.  Although  he  shrinks 
back  from  the  touch  of  unsympathetic  beings  he  soon  realizes  that  the 
reaction  causes  new  feelings,  which  he  analyzes  when  he  returns  into  his 
inner  world:  "Pleasure  begins  only  with  the  melancholy  of  remem- 
brances ...  to  offer  any  sweetness  an  act  must  be  transmuted  into 
thinking  matter.))  The  external  is  only  important  in  so  far  as  it  is 
modified  by  his  thoughts;  «it  is  he  himself  who  creates  the  universe; 
he  is  the  universe.))  This  theory  is  akin  to  the  transcendental  idealism  of 
Fichte.  On  the  other  hand,  in  reading  of  exploits  of  prowess,  Philip 
yearns  for  action;  he  wants  to  rule  and  also  to  serve;  but  what  torture 
«after  having  embraced  in  thought  all  the  degrees  of  human  develop- 
ment, to  begin  life  from  the  lowest  step  of  the  ladder.))  He  is  thus 
induced  to  limit  his  inner  world.  Philip  will  continue  to  dream  with 
the  utmost  energy,  but  will  not  attempt  to  transport  his  dreams  into 
real  life.  «Like  scientists  who  handle  deadly  substances  and  disturbing 
hypotheses,  the  makers  of  rare  feelings  must  not  attempt  their  experi- 
ments among  men.  Their  over-developed  souls  have  hardly  any  place 
in  our  world.  They  must  keep  what  is  most  different  in  them  to  adorn 
their  dreams.)) 

In  the  two  parts  of  'Sous  I'CEil  des  Barbares,)  called  respectively 
«with  the  books))  and  «at  Paris,))  after  having  examined   and   discussed 


MAURICE    BARRES  I570C 

the  effects  of  study  and  culture  on  his  soul  as  well  as  the  reaction  pro- 
duced on  it  by  contact  with  the  outside  world,  Philip  attains  certitude. 
His  ego  does  exist;  it  is  the  only  thing  of  which  he  possesses  a  full  and 
unquestionable  consciousness.  Consequently  it  is  this  ego  that  he  must 
develop  and  improve. 

Philip,  having  retired  to  the  heart  of  Lorraine  with  his  friend  Simon, 
continues  in  <L'Homme  Libre)  his  experiments.  After  having  submitted 
themselves  to  medical  tests  in  order  to  ascertain  that  they  are  bodily 
sound,  for  physical  disorder  in  their  eyes  would  be  as  bad  as  being 
afflicted  with  «Victor  Hugo  mental  twist,))  they  decide  upon  a  rule  and 
select  that  of  St.  Ignace  de  Loyola,  an  astonishing  choice  in  a  man  who 
from  the  start  decides  that  neither  morality  nor  religion  any  longer 
exists.  And  then  they  commune  with  Ste.-Beuve,  Benjamin  Constant, 
Marie  Bashkirtseff,  and  other  egotists. 

Philip  travels  through  Lorraine;  he  visits  Bar-le-Duc  the  ancient 
ducal  town,  Sion  the  religious  shrine.  In  thinking  of  the  fate  of  his 
province,  «once  the  most  populous  in  Europe,  which  gave  promise  of  a 
high  civilization  and  produced  many  heroes  and  has  now  lost  the 
memory  of  her  destroyed  greatness  and  of  her  effaced  genius,))  Philip 
trembles  for  himself.      Will  he  fail? 

During  this  pilgrimage  Philip  clarifies  the  conception  of  his  ego  and 
learns  to  master  his  own  soul.  There,  in  the  tender  and  melancholy 
description  of  the  scenery  of  his  native  land,  so  full  of  historical  and 
sentimental  associations,  we  foresee  the  awakening  of  his  worship  for  his 
country. 

Like  many  of  his  ancestors  of  Northern  strain,  the  ancient  Latin 
culture  of  Italy  attracts  him.  In  Milan,  in  Venice,  he  continues  to 
dream,  to  feel,  to  study.  The  Queen  of  the  Adriatic  inspires  him  with 
some  of  his  most  brilliant  pages.  There  he  found  a  «psychic  life  that 
mingled  with  the  depths  of  his  subconsciousness  in  one  vast  reservoir  of 
delight.  And  with  such  acuteness  did  he  follow  his  most  confused 
sentiments  that  in  them  he  was  able  to  discern  the  future  in  process  of 
formation.  His  life  was  decided  at  Venice,  and  it  was  from  Venice  that 
he  wished  to  date  his  future  works.))  In  Italy,  Philip  clears  his  concep- 
tion of  the  Barbarians,  of  the  non  ego,  and  he  learns  how  to  assimilate 
what  is  most  conducive  in  their  works  to  his  own  development.  From 
his  experience  he  evolves  the  following  rule  of  life: 

«MY  RULE  OF  LIFE 

((To-day  I  am  living  in  a  dream,  made  of  moral  delicacy  and  self -contemplation. 
Vulgarity  cannot  even  reach  me;  for,  sitting  away  down  in  the  depths  of  my  lucid 
palace,  I  cover  up  the  aimless  whisperings  that  come  down  to  me  from  the  others,  by 
airs  and  variations,  which  my  soul  is  ever  ready  to  provide  for  me. 


I570d  MAURICE    BARRES 

«I  have  given  up  solitude;  I  have  decided  to  build  my  house  in  the  very  centre  of 
the  century,  because  there  are  a  certain  number  of  appetites  that  can  only  be  satisfied 
in  active  life.  Wlicn  I  am  alone,  they  beset  me  like  lusty  old  soldiers  eager  for  a 
fresh  battle.  The  lower  side  of  my  nature,  dissatisfied  with  its  own  inactivity, 
oftentimes  used  to  disturb  the  better  part  in  me.  But  now  I  have  found  it  some 
playthings  amongst  men,  so  that  it  may  leave  me  in  peace. 

«It  was  God's  dark  hour  of  affliction  when  He  saw  His  angels,  emanations  of  His 
own  Self,  desert  His  paradise  and  love  the  daughters  of  men.  I  have  found  a  way 
which  makes  it  possible  for  me  to  tolerate  those  parts  of  myself  that  are  inclined 
towards  vulgar  things.  I  have  parceled  myself  out  into  a  great  number  of  souls. 
Not  one  of  them  is  a  suspicious  soul ;  they  all  give  themselves  up  to  any  feeling  that 
may  pass  through  them.  Some  go  to  Church,  others  to  bad  places.  I  do  not  abhor 
it  if  some  parts  of  myself  degrade  themselves  occasionally:  there  is  a  certain  mystical 
pleasure  in  contemplating,  from  the  bottom  of  humiliation,  that  virtue  to  which  we 
are  worthy  to  attain;  and  besides,  a  truly  beautiful  mind  should  not  distract  its 
attention  from  its  preoccupations,  by  weighing  and  measuring  the  villainies  it 
commits  at  the  same  moment.  I  have,  moreover,  taken  the  precaution  that  my 
various  souls  do  not  know  each  other  except  within  myself,  so  that  having  no 
other  point  of  contact  but  my  self-contemplation,  which  created  them,  they 
cannot  cabal  together.  Should  it  happen  that  one  of  them  compromises  the 
security  of  the  whole  group,  and  attempts  to  entice  the  sum  of  my  souls  by  its 
excesses,  then  they  all  rush  upon  the  refractory  one.  After  a  short  struggle  they  soon 
subdue  it. 

«Really,  when  I  was  very  young,  under  the  eye  of  the  Barbarians,  I  went  to  excess 
in  my  distrust  of  the  outer  world.  The  world  is  repulsive,  but  almost  inoflfensive. 
One  can]easily  govern  men  by  getting  hold  of  their  vanities,  as  one  would  catch  a  wild 
ass  by  getting  hold  of  its  muzzle.  With  a  little  alcohol,  and  plenty  of  well-cooked 
dishes  on  your  table,  and  with  money  in  your  pocket,  you  can  stand  almost  any  shock. 
A  much  more  serious  danger,  in  the  inner  world,  is  barrenness,  and  running  riot.  To- 
day it  is  my  one  great  preoccupation  to  avoid  the  one  as  well  as  the  other  of  these 
outcomes  of  clumsiness. 

«My  method  is  well  known;  I  hold  my  soul  well  in  hand,  so  that  it  shall  not 
stumble,  like  an  aged  horse  that  slumbers  as  it  keeps  trotting  onward;  and  I  use  my 
imagination  to  procure  new  thrills  for  it  each  day.  Everyone  will  agree  that  I  excel 
in  the  art  of  bringing  it  back  as  soon  as  it  tries  to  steal  away.  Sometimes  I  interrupt 
myself  in  this  occupation,  and  give  expression  to  the  following  prayer  addressed  to 
myself: 

(( (O  Thou,  who  art  Myself,  Universe  of  which  I  gain  each  day  a  clearer  vision, 
People  that  obey  me  at  the  sign  of  my  finger,  or  a  glance  from  my  eye,  think  not  that 
I  forsake  Thee  if  I  cease  henceforward  to  record  the  observations  with  which  Thy 
development  inspires  me;  but  the  interesting  part  is  to  create  the  method  and  to 
verify  it  in  its  first  applications.  Thou  ever  increasing  sum  of  fiery  and  methodical 
souls,  I  shall  no  longer  describe  Thy  efforts.  I  sliall  content  myself  with  making 
known  a  few  of  the  most  elegant  dreams  of  happiness  dreamed  by  Thee.  Let  us, 
however,  continue  to  embellish  and  increase  our  inner  life,  while  our  days  shall  go 
rolling  onward  through  the  bustle  of  the  world  outside  us.  Let  us  be  convinced  that 
actions  are  of  no  importance,  for  they  by  no  means  express  the  soul  which  has  brought 
them  about,  and  they  have  value  only  through  the  interpretation  which  the  soul 
chooses  to  give  them.) )) 


MAURICE    BARRES  I570e 

In  <Le  Jardin  de  Berenice,)  «a  garden  where  bloom  emotions  soon 
uprooted,))  Philip  comes  willingly  in  contact  with  men.  He  enters 
politics  and  is  elected  deputy.  He  completes  the  education  of  his  ego 
in  studying  the  soul  of  humanity.  His  opponents  have  no  special  reason 
to  rejoice  at  his  entering  the  lists,  for  he  is  a  hardy  champion  and  does 
not  spare  them.  As  his  opponent,  Charles  Martin,  expresses  some 
surprise  at  so  much  harshness  in  a  philosopher,  Philip  answers: 

<(In  taking  for  granted  the  wickedness  and  the  bad  faith  of  my  opponents  (and 
that  is  the  usual  theme  of  every  controversy)  I  make  an  extremely  convenient 
hypothesis.  .  .  .  The  vices  of  my  adversaries,  even  though  fictitious,  permit  me  to 
connect  together  without  so  many  psychological  subtleties  a  very  large  number  of 
their  discreditable  actions.  It  is  a  conception  which  explains  in  a  most  happy 
manner  the  disapproval  and  the  animosity  they  must  inspire,  although  for  reasons 
a  great  deal  more  complicated.  In  fighting  their  imaginary  vices  you  triumph  over 
their  real  faults.)) 

Berenice  plays  a  small  part;  she  is  a  purely  instinctive  agent.  Is  she 
a  girl,  the  people's  soul,  or  the  Unconscious?  asks  Barr^s  himself.  She 
participates  in  some  way  with  the  friendly  animals,  the  hairy  dog  and 
others,  which  roam  in  her  garden,  —  nay,  she  is  little  more  than  an  acci- 
dent of  evolution.  Sweet  and  fair,  she  is  for  the  author  a  pretext  for 
charming  descriptions  but  neither  her  character  nor  her  opinions  are 
significant. 

This  book,  abounding  in  admirable  pages,  is  too  subtle  in  its  theories, 
in  which  we  discern  the  influence  of  the  philosophy  of  Hartmann  and  that 
of  Schopenhauer;  towards  the  end  the  author  seems  inclined  to  abandon 
the  task  of  following  the  ego  in  its  bewildering  evolutions,  and  for  the 
first  time  we  find  a  trace  of  the  nationalistic  tendencies  which  are  to 
play  such  a  preponderant  part  in  Barres'  after  life. 

Barres,  having  decided  that  the  proper  place  for  the  ego  was  in  the 
world,  among  men,  was  led  to  study  sociological  conditions.  As  the  ego 
is  paramount,  not  a  single  individual  must  be  oppressed  even  for  the 
sake  of  the  community.  With  this  truism  as  a  starting  point,  Andre 
Malterre,  the  hero  of  (L'Ennemi  des  Lois)  (1893),  examines  how  society 
can  be  organized.  It  goes  without  saying  that  he  is  an  anarchist  from 
every  point  of  view,  political,  moral,  and  intellectual. 

Two  women  play  a  part  in  the  book.  Claire  is  all  mind  and  has  «a 
passion  for  professors));  Marina,  a  Russian  princess,  artless  and  sensual, 
is  quite  the  reverse.  Malterre  is  at  first  the  lover  of  Marina,  later  on 
the  husband  of  Claire,  and  finally  they  compromise  by  living  all  three 
together.  Quite  an  immoral  solution,  had  not  the  writer  from  the 
beginning  explained  that  it  was  merely  an  allegory. 

With  Claire,  ISIalterre  visits  Germany  and  analyzes  the  effect  of 
German  socialism  upon  German  sensibility.     For  an  intellectual  like 


157of  MAURICE    BARRES 

Barres  it  is -a  shock  to  realize  that  economic  revolution  is  their  only  aim, 
that  their  socialism  appeals  exclusively  «to  the  belly. »  «Give  something 
that  will  change  the  heart  of  man,))  exclaims  Andre:  «it  is  a  state  of  mind 
and  not  laws  that  the  world  demands — a  moral  and  not  a  material 
reform.)) 

The  (Roman  de  I'Energie  nationale)  is  composed  of  three  novels  or 
rather  three  volumes,  the  first,  <Les  Deracines,)  being  the  only  one  that 
can  be  accurately  called  by  that  name.  It  is  of  special  interest  because 
of  its  presentation  of  Barres'  doctrine  of  «regionalism.))  (Les  Dcracincs) 
(The  uprooted)  are  seven  young  Lorrainers  of  different  temperament 
and  station  in  life  but  substantially  of  the  same  formation.  Having 
studied  the  system  of  Kant  with  Professor  Bouteillier  (whose  characteris- 
tics are  strangely  similar  to  those  of  the  late  Professor  Burdeau),  they 
have  retained  only  of  his  teachings  the  critical  sense;  he  has  given  them 
«no  prop  either  in  their  race  or  in  their  land.))  They  go  to  Paris,  and, 
severed  from  all  former  connections,  are  an  easy  prey  to  the  onslaught  of 
their  passions.  Three  of  these  young  men,  Sturel,  Roemerspacher,  and 
St.-Phlin,  have  means;  the  first  two  represent  the  leisurely  and  intellec- 
tual middle  class  and  the  last  the  conservative  county  families.  Bouteil- 
lier is  the  type  of  the  educator  who  branches  off  into  politics  and  attempts 
to  transport  into  life  the  dry  theories  of  the  classroom.  Suret-Lefort  is 
the  climbing  and  unscrupulous  newspaper  man.  Mouchefrin  and 
Racadot,  two  penniless  but  ambitious  youths,  might  have  been  worthy 
citizens  had  they  remained  in  their  native  province,  surrounded  and 
supported  by  old  friends  and  associations,  but  blinded  by  the  intense 
life  of  the  capital,  insufficiently  prepared,  they  launch  a  newspaper; 
they  are  driven  to  the  wall,  and  in  order  to  extricate  themselves,  resort 
to  robbery  and  murder.  Racadot  is  executed  and  IMouchefrin,  his 
accomplice,  escapes  through  the  weakness  of  Sturel,  who,  though  having 
knowledge  of  inculpating  facts,  keeps  silent. 

The  episodes  are  too  numerous  to  be  related  in  detail,  but  the  book, 
of  an  extremely  diversified  and  keen  psychology,  has  a  deep  moral  and 
social  meaning:  we  must  remain  faithful  to  our  native  province  or  region. 
If  a  race  wants  to  survive  it  must  above  all  consider  itself  as  the  heir  of 
the  dead  buried  in  its  soil  and  must  cherish  all  the  customs  accumulated 
through  centuries.  Every  man  who  wants  to  reach  his  highest  develop- 
ment must  remain  attached  to  the  land  of  his  ancestors.  ((Regionalism)) 
has  had,  ever  since,  considerable  influence  on  French  politics  and 
literature. 

<Les  Amities  Frangaises)  (1905)  explains  the  genesis  of  Barres' 
nationalism.  The  following  quotations  sum  up  clearly  the  purport  of 
the  book: 

((Centuries  have  accumulated  in  our  subconsciousness  extremely  remote  moral 
forces.     To  educate  a  young  man,  one  must  give  him  above  all  a  clear  idea  and  a  full 


MAURICE    BARRES  I57og 

possession  of  these  latent  forces,  one  must  arouse  in  him  the  love  of  his  native  land, 
the  memory  of  his  forefathers. 

((A  little  child  whom  you  teach  to  differentiate  and  revere  hereditary  emotions, 
whose  mind  you  fill  all  through  his  life  with  images  of  family  and  national  life,  will 
possess  in  his  inner  self  a  soundness,  proof  against  dialectics,  a  solid  ground  to  stand 
upon  against  all  infractions,  a  creed,  that  is  to  say,  moral  health. 

«At  twenty,  one  is  convinced  that  famous  cities  are  young  women;  one  hastens, 
heart  a  flutter,  to  love-trysts:  the  shrine  is  empty,  nothing  but  stone.  .  .   . 

((Grandeur  of  soul,  beauty,  passion,  sacrifice,  we  first  enshrine  you  in  legendary 
cities,  for  we  see  only  too  well  that  you  do  not  belong  to  the  past  of  our  native  town; 
but  upon  returning  from  a  long  journey  among  material  things  of  life,  when  one  has 
seen  nothing  but  arid  sand  or  worse  still,  exasperating  fevers,  if  one  has  husbanded 
enough  strength  to  master  disillusion,  one  expects  nothing  except  from  this  inner 
chant  which  our  dead  have  transmitted  to  us  in  their  blood.)) 

In  <Au  Service  de  TAllemagne)  (1905)  Barres  studies  the  Alsatian 
problem:  Does  its  solution  lie  in  the  abandonment  of  the  soil  to  the 
conqueror,  or  must  the  young  men  stay  in  spite  of  all?  Barres  in  the 
person  of  his  hero  decides  for  the  latter.  Better  to  wear  the  German 
uniform  when  the  age  of  military  service  comes  than  to  give  up  the 
struggle  (evidently  the  author  had  not  foreseen  the  actual  War). 
The  Alsatians  must  remain  faithful  to  their  ancient  province,  humiliated 
as  she  is,  prostrated  as  they  are,  and  fight  to  the  bitter  end  to  prevent 
the  eradication  of  Latin  culture. 

(Colette  Baudoche)  (1909)  forms  with  (Les  Amities  Frangaises)  and 
(Au  Service  de  I'Allemagne'  a  trilogy  called  'Les  Bastions  de  I'Est.'  It 
is  really  a  novel;  we  find  there  a  hero,  Dr.  Frederic  Asmus,  a  young  Pom- 
eranian professor,  who  represents  the  German  soul  and  nature,  and 
Colette  Baudoche,  a  young  girl  from  Metz,  who  is  evidently  the  imper- 
sonation of  French  culture.  Asmus,  appointed  to  the  lycee  of  Metz, 
former  capital  of  annexed  Lorraine,  finds  lodgings  in  the  house  of  Mme. 
Baudoche,  a  worthy  widow  full  of  common  sense.  Her  heart  still  beats 
for  France,  but  she  is  poor,  the  young  instructor  appears  thoroughly 
respectable,  and,  after  all,  they  must  live.  Asmus,  who  wants  to  perfect 
his  French,  makes  himself  as  agreeable  as  he  can  to  his  landlady's 
daughter.  He  is  influenced,  conquered,  by  the  polite  and  dignified 
ways  of  these  two  women;  through  their  influence  his  views  as  well  as 
his  ways  change  a  great  deal  more  than  he  realizes  himself.  He  appears 
so  French  that  his  colleagues  become  suspicious.  He  goes  so  far  that 
he  dares  to  blame  the  harshness  and  awkwardness  of  the  German 
masters  towards  their  pupils.  He  dreams  of  a  new  Lorraine  where  the 
Teutons  would  come  to  perfect  their  education  by  intercourse  with  a 
more  pleasant  form  of  civilization.  He  forgets  his  German  fiancee  and 
asks  for  the  hand  of  the  young  Frenchwoman.  Colette  hesitates, 
though  she  feels  a  good  deal  of  sympathy  for  the  young  man,  so  anxious 
to  please  her  and  so  kindly  inclined  towards  her  own  people;  but  he  is  a 


I570h  MAURICE    BARRES 

German!  She  has  a  deeply  rooted  feeling  of  what  she  owes  to  her  for- 
bears, to  those  who  have  given  their  lives  in  vain  for  the  independence  of 
Lorraine.  At  the  conclusion  of  a  ceremony  for  soldiers  of  the  war  of  1870, 
these  glorious  dead  inspire  the  young  girl  with  a  full  conviction  of  her 
duty;  she  must  not  marry  Asmus.  She  tells  him  so,  and  returns  to  her 
sad  and  colorless  life  without  a  regret. 

In  this  book,  full  of  charming  descriptions  and  subtle  analysis,  we 
are  in  real  life.  Asmus  and  Colette  are  neither  heroes  nor  symbols; 
they  are  plain  everyday  people.  Asmus  lacks  delicacy,  but  he  is  upright 
and  generous.  Barres  has  not  tried  to  turn  him  into  ridicule;  he  is 
lovable,  so  the  girl  loves  him.  Colette  is  young,  honest,  and  keen  of 
perception;  she  is  the  result,  but  not  the  highest  product,  of  centuries  of 
French  civilization.  There  is  probably  less  lyricism  in  this  novel  than 
in  any  other  written  by  Barres.  Nevertheless,  seldom  has  he  shown  to 
better  advantage  and  under  a  more  cleverly  diversified  style  his  power 
of  description.  We  give  below  a  translation  of  the  first  pages  of  the 
book,  a  picture  of  Metz,  which  is  a  good  example  of  his  descriptive 
power: — 

((There  is  hardly  a  town  that  appeals  more  to  our  affections  than  Metz,  If  you 
recall  to  a  Frenchman  from  Metz  the  Cathedral,  the  Esplanade,  the  narrow  streets 
with  the  familiar  names,  the  Moselle  at  the  foot  of  the  Ramparts,  and  the  villages 
lying  scattered  over  the  hills,  he  will  grow  sad.  Yet  these  people  from  Metz  belong 
to  an  old  civilization;  they  are  moderate,  well-balanced,  and  anxious  to  hide  their 
capacity  for  enthusiasm.  A  chance  passerby  cannot  understand  this  emotion  on 
behalf  of  a  city  famous  chiefly  through  wars,  where  he  has  seen  nothing  remarkable 
save  perhaps,  by  a  pleasant  river,  a  fine  cathedral  and  some  eighteenth  century 
remains.  But  one  must  understand  that  Metz  does  not  aim  at  appealing  to  the 
senses;  she  seduces  in  a  more  subtle  manner;  she  is  a  city  for  the  soul,  for  the  old 
French  military  and  rural  soul. 

((The  statues  of  Fabert  and  Ney,  which  have  now  those  of  William  II.  and 
Frederic-Charles  close  by,  used  to  be  surrounded  by  that  prestige  which  is  accorded 
to  sacred  monuments. 

((People  would  point  out  to  each  other  the  heroes  of  the  great  wars,  on  the  same 
squares  on  which  to-day  the  German  officers  drill  their  recruits.  The  municipal 
buildings  still  retain  the  stamp  put  upon  them  by  the  engineers  of  our  Army;  straight- 
ness  and  simplicity  everywhere,  neatness  in  the  carvings  of  the  pediments,  rectilinear 
appearance  on  the  whole.  From  one  side  of  the  Place  Royale  to  the  other,  the 
Courts  of  Law  join  hands  with  the  Barracks  of  the  Corps  of  Engineers;  even  the 
private  houses  seem  to  fall  into  line,  and  under  the  Arcades  of  the  Place  Saint-Louis 
there  seems  to  float  a  spirit  of  discipline.  This  impression  spreads  over  the  soft 
valley  of  the  Moselle.  From  the  Esplanade,  one  can  just  distinguish,  under  a  cloudy 
sky,  twelve  wine-growing  villages,  bathed  or  mirrored  in  the  Moselle,  and  which, 
like  the  river,  endear  themselves  to  our  imagination  by  the  very  liquid  softness  of 
their  names:  Scy,  providing  the  first  of  our  wines;  Rozerieulles,  where  each  house  has 
its  own  vineyard;  Woippy,  home  of  strawberries;  Lorry,  made  rich  by  its  yellow 
plums;  all  of  them  abundantly  surrounded  by  fruit  trees  that  seem  to  shelter  and 


MAURICE    BARRES  1570  1 

love  them.  But  the  hills  on  which  they  are  ranged  are  leveled  on  the  summit;  for 
they  have  become  the  forts  of  Plappeville,  Saint-Quentin,  Saint-Blaise,  and  Sommy. 

<(The  Metzians  of  the  time  before  the  War,  soldiers  or  relatives  of  soldiers,  all  of 
them,  lived  in  daily  touch  with  the  agricultural  region.  People  of  independent  means 
had  their  farms  out  there,  tradesmen  their  customers,  and  down  to  the  most  unpre- 
tending family  they  all  dreamed  of  one  day  possessing  a  country  house,  where  they 
would  go  each  fall  to  superintend  the  grape-gathering. 

«A11  this  made  up  an  atmosphere  which  was  very  appropriate  for  the  preservation 
of  the  old  French  type.  Those  who  have  not  known  this  city  and  meditated  upon  it, 
are  perhaps  not  aware  of  the  value  of  a  civilization  grown  out  of  the  habits  and 
customs  of  agriculture  and  of  war.  The  emigrants  from  Lorraine  do  not  yearn  only 
for  landscapes  and  lost  customs,  or  for  their  scattered  fellow-countrymen;  it  seems  to 
them  as  if  they  had  left  behind  something  indispensable  to  their  moral  health. 

«I  never  pass  the  threshold  of  this  city,  whose  tradition  has  been  forced  from  its 
beaten  path,  without  being  conscious  of  the  break  in  our  destinies.  Metz  is  the  place 
where  can  best  be  measured  the  depression  in  our  strength.  Here,  people  have  toiled 
for  a  Glory,  a  Country,  .a  Civilization,  which  all  three  are  lying  low  to-day.  A  group 
of  women  alone  protects  them  still.  By  instinct  I  turn  my  steps  towards  the  Isle  of 
Chambieres  and  sit  down  near  the  monument  which  the  «Ladies  of  Metz»  have 
erected  in  memory  of  the  soldiers  whom  they  had  nursed.  This  is  one  of  our  sacred 
stones,  an  Altar,  and  a  place  of  refuge,  the  last  of  our  Menhirs. 

«A11  around  this  high  place,  the  Teuton  flood  rises  unceasingly  and  threatens  to 
submerge  all.  The  immigrants,  twenty-four  thousand  in  number  (without  counting 
the  Garrison),  are  dominating  in  the  elections  the  twenty  thousand  natives.  Will 
the  old  French  edifice  be  carried  away  by  the  force  of  this  onrush?  A  traveler 
arriving  in  Metz  will,  from  the  outset,  judge  the  worth  of  this  town  as  if  it  had  been 
entirely  reconstructed  along  German  lines  and  to  suit  the  needs  of  the  Conquerors. 

«The  new  Railway  Station,  where  you  arrive,  proclaims  the  firm  endeavor  to 
create  a  style  of  the  Empire,  the  Colossal  style,  as  they  call  it,  putting  the  accent  on 
the  last  syllable.  This  station  evokes  our  wonderment  by  its  Romanesque  style  and 
by  a  steeple  which,  so  they  say,  William  II.  himself  designed;  but  there  is  no  soaring 
upwards,  everything  is  held  in,  crouching,  pressed  down  by  a  prodigious,  spinage- 
green  lid.  You  find  in  it  the  traces  of  an  ambition  that  would  be  worthy  of  a  cathe- 
dral, but  the  result  is  only  a  tart,  or  a  huge  meat  pie.  Pretension  and  lack  of  taste 
are  still  more  clearly  seen  in  the  details.  The  worthy  architect  has  strained  his 
imagination,  in  order  to  show  the  destination  of  the  building  in  every  ornamental 
motive.  We  loyal  Germans,  truth-speaking  artists  that  we  are,  and  kindly  con- 
descending to  amuse  our  serious  population  when  they  come  to  buy  their  tickets,  we 
shall  show  them,  as  chapters  of  our  pillars,  the  heads  of  soldiers  wearing  spiked 
helmets,  faces  of  employees  with  stylish  moustaches,  engines,  customs  officers 
examining  a  traveler's  suit  case,  finally,  an  old  gentleman  in  a  top  hat,  shedding 
tears  while  bidding  farewell  to  his  grandson.  This  series  of  platitudes  is  doubtlessly 
the  product  of  a  philosophical  conception,  and  might  at  a  stretch  be  defended  by 
force  of  reasoning;  but  no  person  of  taste  will  ever  excuse  them,  if  he  has  seen  them 
in  all  their  dismal  reality. 

«0n  leaving  the  station,  one  falls  straight  into  an  entirely  new  quarter,  where 
hundreds  of  houses  allure  us  first  by  their  color  of  coffee,  chocolate,  or  tea,  revealing, 
so  it  seems,  a  predilection  for  eatables  on  the  part  of  German  architects.  I  see  no- 
where a  wide,  open,  and  beautiful  avenue  leading  into  the  city,  but  the  same  craze 


I570J 


MAURICE    BARRES 


for  the  enormous  seems  to  have  built  huge  apartment  houses  and  private  villas  en- 
cumbered with  cheap  and  blustering  carvings.  There  are  house  fronts  with  many 
colored  woodwork,  Alsatian  fashion,  flanked  by  turrets  that  rise  up  in  so  sharp  a  point 
that  no  one  can  enter  them.  Then  there  are  houses  in  the  style  of  Louis  Seize,  but 
built  in  red  brick,  decorated  with  cast-iron  vases  and  crowned  by  tinplate  garrets. 
Here  copies  of  Augsburg  Gothic,  there  a  few  samples  of  that  Romanesque  which  has 
always  seemed  mysteriously  to  excite  Prussian  sensibility.  Lastly,  a  thousand 
goblins,  elfs,  and  sprites,  bent  under  invisible  burdens. 

«I  have  no  feeling  of  power  before  this  frontage,  made  of  unsquared  stones  that 
are  only  a  thin  veneering  over  brick.  And  I  do  not  any  more  enjoy  a  feeling  of 
happy  imagination,  on  seeing  a  mason  taking  out  of  his  bag,  at  random,  an  infinite 
assortment  of  architectural  motives.  These  constructors  possess  extensive  erudition, 
and  moreover,  a  Frenchman  can  well  see  that  they  have  copied  some  excellent  pieces 
at  Versailles,  some  very  good  bull's  eyes,  pUasters,  obelisks;  but  all  these  motives  are 
placed  one  beside  the  other,  haphazard;  they  are  neither  reduced  to  their  just  pro- 
portions nor  executed  in  the  proper  materials.  The  whole  of  this  new  quarter,  which 
aims  at  a  show  of  power  and  wealth,  is  but  a  falsehood  and  a  sign  of  disorder  and 
poverty  of  genius.  It  is,  in  fact,  inconceivable,  except  as  the  frenzied  work  of  over- 
driven students,  or  the  taunting  tomfoolery  of  a  painter's  'prentices  making  game  of 
their  master.  You  could  almost  imagine  seeing  before  you,  congealed  in  lard,  the 
foolish  tricks  of  some  students  of  Architecture  straight  from  Auerbach's  Cellar.  In  a 
corner  of  this  huge  nightmare,  away  underneath  a  rubbish  heap  of  old  baskets  and 
dented  pails,  is  that  not  the  ancient  gate  of  Saint  Thidbaud?  Ah,  let  them  demolish 
it,  let  them  give  the  finishing  stroke  to  that  martyr! 

«!  tread  more  firmly  again  and  breathe  more  freely,  as  soon  as  I  have  crossed  the 
line  of  the  old  Ramparts.  I  would  not  say  that  these  small  and  much  used  houses, 
with  their  convenient  shutters  and  here  and  there  a  wrought-iron  balcony,  are 
beautiful,  but  they  do  not  excite  laughter.  Simple  people  have  constructed  these 
dwellings  after  their  own  image,  and,  peacefully  wishing  to  live  life  as  it  is  lived  in 
Metz,  they  have  not  taken  the  trouble  to  look  for  models  in  all  the  centuries  and  under 
all  climates.  See  how  harmonious  and  pleasing  are  those  suitable  buildings  of  the 
old  gunpowder  factory,  shaded  by  fine  old  trees  and  washed  by  the  Moselle,  at  the 
foot  of  the  Esplanade.  So  much  moderation  and  calm  seems  poor  to  German 
Esthetes.  This  country  was  drained,  clarified,  I  should  like  to  say,  spiritualized; 
they  disturb,  overburden,  encumber  it;  they  pour  in  their  dregs.  The  roofs  of  the 
houses  still  remain  French,  but  gradually  the  ground  floor,  the  shops,  become  Ger- 
manized. At  any  moment  one  can  see  the  front  of  a  house  being  scraped  and  taken 
down,  and  the  poor,  ripped-up  building  is  then  clad  in  iron  armor,  with  great  big 
windows,  where  at  night  the  electric  lights  will  shed  their  blinding  splendor  over 
mountains  of  cigars.  Teuton  dullness  begins  to  possess  Metz,  and  worse  than 
dullness,  that  degrading  odor  of  Railway  Refreshment-Rooms,  of  sour  beer,  wet 
woolen  garments,  and  stale  tobacco  smoke. 

^Certain  quarters,  however,  remain  intact:  Mozelle,  the  Saintc-Croix  Heights, 
and  the  Quays,  where  one  can  find  those  aspects  of  Metz  that  will  last  forever.  The 
peasants  still  come  to  bring  the  grain  from  the  Seille  and  from  up  country  to  the  old 
mills.  The  women,  in  their  goffered  bonnets,  are  pushing  along  their  carts  laden 
with  butter,  eggs,  and  poultry.  The  Hotel  de  Lyon  is  still  overflowing  on  Saturdays 
with  countryfolk  come  to  the  pig  market,  which  is  held  on  the  Cathedral  Square,  and 
the  C6te-de-Dclme  Inn  remains  the  meeting-place  of  amateurs  when  the  horse- 


MAURICE    BARRES  I57ok 

dealers,  on  the  Place  Mazelle,  show  oflf  the  big  plough-horses  that  have  a  twist  of 

straw  braided  in  with  their  tails. 

<(Am  I  the  dupe  of  an  illusion,  a  dream  of  my  forewarned  heart?  In  the  network  of 
these  narrow  streets,  where  the  old  names  over  the  shops  give  me  a  thrill  of  pleasure, 
I  seem  to  feel  the  simplicity  of  former  courteous  manners,  and  those  virtues  of 
humility  and  dignity  which,  in  our  fathers,  were  in  tune  with  each  other.  I  taste 
the  wholesome  coldness  of  one-time  discipline,  tempered  by  humor,  and  so  different 
from  Prussian  constraint.  Emotion  gains  our  hearts  in  these  old  parts  of  Metz, 
where  to-day  women  and  children  predominate.  They  brighten  our  gift  of  spirit- 
uality. They  lead  us  back  towards  France,  and  France  on  her  knees  is  the  most 
frequent  synonym  of  the  Ideal.  Those  who  remain  faithful  to  her,  place  a  sentiment 
above  their  positive  interests.  If  a  few  disown  her,  it  is  because  they  are  enslaved 
by  utilitarian  principles,  and  because  they  sacrifice  their  share  of  moral  life.)) 

<Greco  ou  le  Secret  de  Tolede)  is  a  psychological  study  of  the  work 
of  the  great  Spanish  painter  and  of  the  peculiarities  of  the  strange,  noble, 
and  beautiful  city  of  Toledo.  ((The  genius  of 'Greco  lies  in  the  fact  that 
his  thought  is  thoroughly,  absolutely  Spanish.  His  paintings  placed 
in  the  very  heart  of  Spain  give  us  an  intuition  of  the  motives  of  that 
nation  in  her  classical  period.  Every  one  of  his  extraordinary  personages 
bears  in  his  inner  self  the  same  principle  of  hope,  of  ardor,  of  unconcern.)) 

(La  CoUine  Inspireei  (1913)  is  a  true  story  more  or  less  romanticized. 
Barres'  birthplace  is  not  far  distant  from  the  spot  where  the  events 
happened  that  form  the  basis  of  the  book,  and  he  most  likely  had  many 
times  heard  of  the  legend.  Other  data  were  found  in  church  papers 
deposited  in  the  Nancy  library.  The  story  is  of  three  visionary  priests 
who  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  aroused  a  kind  of  re- 
ligious mania  among  some  people  of  that  region.  They  wanted  shortly 
after  the  Revolution  to  install  a  peculiar  form  of  mysticism  in  Lorraine. 
Leopold  Baillard,  ((cure))  of  Flavigny,  with  the  help  of  his  two  brothers, 
also  priests,  dreamed  of  erecting  wonderful  shrines  and  building  up 
immense  monasteries  on  the  hill  of  Sion-Vaudemont  (La  CoUine  In- 
spiree).  He  founded  a  religious  order  which  at  first  prospered.  But  his 
huge  enterprise,  financially  unsound,  caused  anxiety  to  his  bishop,  who 
counseled  him  to  be  more  prudent.  Father  Baillard,  blinded  with  pride, 
refused  to  follow  the  advice.  Soon  he  fell  into  debt;  the  order  was  dis- 
rupted; he  was  deprived  of  his  title  of  superior,  and  relegated  to  the 
unimportant  parish  of  Saxon.  He  refused  to  obey,  and  went  to  Nor- 
mandy to  see  a  certain  Vintras  who  pretended  to  be  an  emanation  of  the 
Lord  and  to  perform  miracles.  The  man  was  a  former  house-servant, 
and  had  been  several  times  convicted  of  theft,  forgery,  and  embezzlement, 
but  he  possessed  undoubtedly  a  great  deal  of  personal  magnetism  and 
eloquence.  He  converted  Baillard  to  his  new  faith  and  consecrated  him 
Pontiff  and  prophet. 

Coming  back  to  Lorraine  the  priest  started  his  new  cult  with  his 
two  brothers,  who  became  pontiffs  in  their  turn,  and  they  gained  quite  a 


I570I  MAURICE    BARRES 

number  of  followers.  The  new  creed  soon  became  entirely  pagan  in 
form  as  well  as  in  purport,  the  ceremonies  recalling  the  ancient  saturnalia. 
The  Baillards,  first  interdicted,  then  excommunicated,  were  attacked 
by  the  infuriated  inhabitants  and  had  to  flee.  Peace  reigned  again  on 
the  hill.  Towards  1S57,  one  after  the  other,  the  three  brothers  came 
back  to  their  native  soil.  Baillard,  who  was  married  and  a  traveling 
salesman  for  a  wine  firm,  was  still  living  in  daily  intercourse  with  the 
occult.  Father  Aubry,  his  former  adversary,  converted  him  on  his 
death-bed,  but  his  last  prayer  was  for  the  soul  of  Vintras!  This  strange 
story  is  treated  by  Barres  in  his  usual  poetic  manner.  At  the  close  of 
the  book  we  find  a  dialogue  between  the  meadow  and  the  chapel  which  is 
a  masterpiece  of  suggestive  prose.  The  meadow  is  the  spirit  of  the  soil, 
—  ancestors,  liberty,  inspiration;  the  chapel  represents  rule  and  author- 
ity; salvation  lies  in  the  union  of  both,  conciliating  thus  enthusiasm  with 
discipline,  the  heart  with  reason. 

'La  Grande  Pitie  des  Eglises  de  France)  is  a  book  of  polemics.  After 
the  separation  of  Church  and  State  in  France,  confessional  associations 
had  been  charged  with  the  upkeep  of  religious  buildings,  but  the  Church 
rejected  the  principle  of  these  associations  as  contrary  to  canonical 
rules.  The  municipalities  were  not  responsible  for  the  maintenance  of 
the  old  churches,  and  they  could  prevent  the  Catholics  from  maintaining 
them.  This  unfortunate  state  of  affairs  permitted  the  desecration  of 
some  monuments  and  the  destruction  of  a  few  others.  Although  an 
agnostic,  Barres  is  a  poet  and  an  artist  and  could  not  remain  indiffer- 
ent. He  delivered  on  this  subject  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  three 
speeches  which  form  the  bulk  of  the  volume.  A  number  of  the  French 
churches  are  of  the  highest  artistic  and  historical  value.  Those  classified 
as  "historical  monuments"  are  supervised  and  protected  by  the  State. 
The  number  of  the  churches  in  this  list  is  small.  Barres  proposed  to 
include  all  churches  built  before  iSoo.  In  spite  of  all  efforts  he  failed; 
the  Chamber  rejected  the  draft  of  law  he  had  proposed.  But  he  suc- 
ceeded in  arousing  in  the  whole  country  a  lively  interest  not  only  arr^ong 
the  Catholics  themselves  but  also  among  all  those  who  love  art,  beauty, 
and  memories  of  the  past.  The  movement  will  probably  bring  about  in 
time  some  compromise  satisfactory  both  to  the  government  and  to  the 
Church. 

During  the  War,  Maurice  Barres  has  published  a  number  of  books 

composed  for  the  most  part  of  newspaper  articles.     They  form  a  series, 

<L'Ame   Frangaise    et   la   Guerre,)    (The   French   Soul  and  the   War). 

Their  titles  are    (L'Union  Sacrce)    (1914),     <Les  Saints  de  la  France) 

(1914-1915),     (La    Croix   de   Guerre,)    and    <L'Amitic   des    Tranch^es) 

(1915)- 

This  enormous  production,  and  we  have  omitted  quite  a  number  of 
titles,  is  far  from  representing  the  whole  of  Barres'  work,  for  he  is  also 


MAURICE    BARRES  I570m 

one  of  the  most  prolific  journalists  in  France.  He  has  contributed  —  and 
often  regularly,  publishing  one  or  two  articles  a  week  —  to  Le  Voltaire, 
Le  Figaro,  La  Revue  Independante,  Le  Journal,  Le  Courrier  de  I'Est, 
I'Echo  de  Paris,  Le  Gaulois,  La  Patrie,  La  Revue  de  Paris,  La  Revue 
Bleue,  and  La  Cocarde,  which  he  made  famous  in  1894-5  when  he  was 
political  editor  and  published  daily  an  article  in  its  columns. 

This  literary  activity  would  have  been  more  than  sufficient  to  fill  the 
life  of  any  man;  it  was  not  so  for  Barres,  who,  besides,  has  had  a  most 
strenuous  public  career.  His  speeches  in  the  Academy,  the  Chamber  of 
Deputies,  and  political  meetings  have  gained  for  him  a  well  deserved 
reputation  as  orator  and  debater. 

In  1888,  to  put  into  practice  his  theories  of  ^L'Homme  Libre*  and 
probably  to  acquire  data  for  (Le  Jardin  de  Berenice,),  he  entered  the 
lists  and  in  1889  was  elected  a  deputy  from  Nancy  after  so  savage  a 
fight  that  on  one  occasion,  at  Champenoux,  he  was  seriously  wounded 
and  his  carriage  broken  to  splinters  and  set  on  fire  by  the  mob.  He  was 
then  so  youthful  in  appearance  that  frequently  people  thought  he  was 
campaigning  for  his  father  and  were  taken  aback  when  he  told  them  he 
was  himself  the  candidate.  He  had  joined  the  party  of  General  Bou- 
langer;  that  a  man  as  clever  as  Barres  had  chosen  such  an  indifferent 
leader  might  surprise.  The  explanation  lies  in  the  fact  that  he  was  a 
Lorrainer,  and  had  never  given  up  the  hope  of  seeing  his  native  province 
restored  to  its  former  condition;  Boulanger  embodied  for  him  the  spirit 
of  Revenge. 

Beaten  in  1893,  Barres  did  not  abandon  his  political  career.  He  kept 
on  fostering  by  all  means  in  his  power  the  ideas  of  nationalism  and 
regionalism.  Elected  deputy  for  Paris  in  1906,  he  has  since  always 
been  re-elected.  In  political  circles  he  enjoys  a  great-  deal  more  influence 
than  might  be  supposed  from  his  opinions;  this  is  due  to  his  prestige  as  a 
writer  and  a  thinker,  to  a  proverbial  coolness  under  fire,  and  a  dangerous 
gift  for  biting  repartee. 

Maurice  Barres  married  Mademoiselle  Jougne,  daughter  of  Colonel 
Jougne,  and  has  a  son,  Philip,  who  plays  quite  an  important  part  in 
some  of  his  books,  notably  «Les  Amities  Frang-aises)).  He  was  elected  to 
the  Academy  in  1906. 

A  modern  French  critic  whose  opinions  are  a  guarantee  that  he  would 
not  unduly  praise  Barres  said:  ((Anatole  France  and  Maurice  Barres 
are  nowadays  the  only  two  men  in  French  letters  worth  writing  about.)) 
Paul  Bourget  in  his  turn  thinks  that:  «0f  the  young  men  who  since 
1880  have  entered  the  French  literary  world.  Monsieur  Maurice  Barres 
is  certainly  the  most  famous.))  The  judgment  of  his  fellow  authors  as 
well  as  his  influence  on  a  large  number  of  young  men  of  his  generation 
shows  clearly  the  importance  of  his  work.  One  of  the  most  brilliant  of 
them,  Jean  de  Tinan,  said  shortly  before  his  untimely  death,  ((Barres 


I570Q  MAURICE    BARRES 

has  been  our  educator,  our  professor  of  energy  —  he  has  known  how  to 
be  our  master  without  diminishing  in  any  way  our  initiative  .  .  .  for 
that,  we  shall  never  be  thankful  enough.)) 

As  an  artist  Barres  was  at  first  a  Romantic;  but  of  a  Romanticism 
purified  from  all  its  inferior  characteristics:  excessive  imagery,  doubtful 
grammar,  inaccurate  language.  He  is  now  a  pure  classic  by  the  pre- 
ponderance of  the  inner  life,  the  concentration  of  thought,  the  clearness 
of  expression,  the  impeccable  syntax.  He  has  contributed  more  than 
anybody  else  to  the  reversion  to  traditional  forms  of  style  and  at  the 
same  time  has  assimilated  all  that  there  was  of  real  worth  and  likely  to 
live  in  impressionism.  The  tendency  toward  classicism  is  more  and 
more  noticeable  in  his  work;  he  himself  has  said  in  (  Le  Voyage  de 
Sparte' :  «  I  was  mistaken  in  my  manner  of  interpreting  what  I  admired; 
I  was  striving  for  a  certain  effect  and  turned  around  things  until  I  had 
obtained  it.  Now  I  meet  life  in  a  more  familiar  way;  I  wish  to  see  it 
with  eyes  as  simple  as  the  Greek  eyes  were.))  Formerly  the  most  sub- 
jective of  artists,  he  tends  now  to  an  ever-increasing  objectivity. 

Barres  has  been  more  or  less  misunderstood  by  Anglo-Saxons,  and 
more  particularly  by  Americans.  His  reasoning  is  often  of  too  abstract 
and  metaphysical  a  character  to  be  likely  to  appeal  to  nations  who  are 
above  all  practical.  Every  educated  Frenchman  is  a  philosopher  and 
has  a  fondness  for  philosophical  speculation  and  a  training  in  it  quite 
uncommon  among  the  reading  public  of  the  great  Anglo-Saxon  nations. 
For  Americans  ((regionalism,))  Barres  most  characteristic  tenet,  is  so 
difficult  to  appreciate  that  it  is  almost  impossible  to  state  it  in  terms 
which  for  American  readers  will  not  involve  a  suggestion  of  absurdity. 
That  a  man  should  be  fond  or  proud  of  his  birthplace  is  natural  enough; 
that  he  should  be  bound  to  stay  there  simply  because  it  is  his  birthplace 
is  to  the  vast  majority  of  Americans  unthinkable.  Americans  could 
better  understand  the  supreme  importance  attached  by  Barres  to  local 
traditions  if  he  were  a  devout  Catholic;  when  they  learn  that  he  is  an 
agnostic  they  are  at  a  loss  to  reconcile  what  appears  to  them  inconsist- 
ency. But  it  is  because  Barres  has  discarded  all  Christian  faith  that 
he  clings  to  the  tradition  of  the  race. 

Barres  is  himself  an  example  of  his  own  theory  in  the  sense  that  he  is 
a  peculiarly  French  author,  passionately  admired  in  his  own  country, 
and  little  appreciated  beyond  its  limits  except  by  students  of  French 
literature  and  philosophy.  For  those  unfamiliar  with  the  French 
language  and  with  French  habits  of  thought  he  is  likely  to  remain 
practically  a  closed  book,  for  the  charm  of  his  style  is  of  that  evanescent 
quality  which  is  most  difficult  to  carry  over  in  translation.  He  will 
retain  his  place  in  French  letters  as  a  thinker  of  a  most  original  turn  of 
mind  and  also  as  one  of  the  best  stylists  of  the  twentieth  century. 


I57I 


JAMES  MATTHEW  BARRIE 
(i860-) 

IR  James  Matthew  Barrie  (created  a  Baronet  in  1913)  was 
born  on  ]\Iay  9th,  i860,  at  Kirriemuir,  Scotland  (((Thrums))). 
He  has  lovingly  portrayed  his  father,  a  physician,  as  ((Dr. 
McQueen,))  his  mother  and  sister  as  ((Jess))  and  ((Leeby));  and  he  has  paid 
a  direct  tribute  to  his  mother's  character  in  the  beautiful  little  study  that 
bears  as  title  her  own  name,  Alargaret  Ogilvy.  After  an  academy  course 
at  Dumfries,  he  entered  at  eighteen  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  where 
he  graduated  M.A.,  and  took  honors  in  the  English  Literature  class. 
A  few  months  later  he  took  a  place  on  a  newspaper  in  Nottingham,  and 
in  the  spring  of  1885  went  to  London,  where  the  papers  had  begun  to 
accept  his  work.  Above  all,  the  St.  James's  Gazette  had  published  the 
first  of  the  ( Auld  Licht  Idylls,)  November  17th,  1884;  and  the  editor, 
Frederick  Greenwood,  instantly  perceiving  a  new  and  rich  genius, 
advised  him  to  work  the  vein  further,  enforcing  the  advice  by  refusing 
to  accept  his  contributions  on  other  subjects.  To  his  mother  he  owed 
much  help  in  this  early  work.  In  answer  to  his  excited  letters,  she 
((went  in  for  literature,))  racking  her  brain  for  memories  that  he  might 
convert  into  articles,  and  dictating  them  to  his  sisters.  ((How  well  I 
could  hear  her  saying  between  the  lines:  (But  the  editor-man  will  never 
stand  that,  it's  perfect  blethers.))) 

He  had  the  usual  painful  struggle  to  become  a  successful  journalist 
detailed  in  (When  a  Man's  Single);  but  his  real  work  was  other  and 
greater.  In  1887  (When  a  Man's  Single)'  came  out  serially  in  the 
British  Weekly;  it  has  little  merit  except  in  the  Scottish  prelude,  which 
is  of  high  quality  in  style  and  pathos.  His  first  published  book  was 
•(Better  Dead)  (1887);  it  works  out  a  cynical  idea  which  would  be 
amusing  in  five  pages,  but  is  diluted  into  tediousness  by  being  spread 
over  fifty.  But  in  1889  came  a  second  masterpiece,  (A  Window  in 
Thrums,)  a  continuation  of  the  Auld  Licht  Idylls  from  an  inside  instead 
of  an  outside  standpoint,  —  not  superior  to  the  first,  but  their  full  equal 
in  a  deliciousness  of  which  one  cannot  say  how  much  is  matter  and  how 
much  style.  (  My  Lady  Nicotine)'  appeared  in  1890;  it  was  very  popular 
and  has  some  amusing  sketches,  but  no  enduring  quality.  (An  Edin- 
burgh Eleven )  (1890)  is  a  set  of  sketches  of  his  classmates  and  professors. 

In  1 89 1  the  third  of  his  Scotch  works  appeared,  —  (The  Little  Min- 
ister,)—  which  raised  him  from  the  rank  of  an  admirable  sketch  writer 
to  that  of  an  admirable  novelist,  despite  its  fantastic  plot.  (Margaret 
Ogilvy)  appeared  in  1896;  the  novel  (Sentimental  Tommy)  and  its 
sequel  (Tommy  and  Grizel>  in  1896  and  1900;   (The  Little  White  Bird,) 


1572  JAMES    MATTHEW    BARRIE 

a  story,  with  many  touches  of  fantasy,  of  an  old  bachelor's  love  for  a 
child,  in  1902.  Before  1902,  he  had  written  several  plays,  all  fairly 
successful,  but  not  notably  original:  < Walker,  London,)  (The  Professor's 
Love  Story,)  (The  Little  Minister)  (dramatized  from  the  novel),  (The 
Wedding  Guest, ^  and  (Quality  Street.)  Since  1902,  he  has  written 
almost  entirely  for  the  stage,  and  has  become  one  of  the  most  popular 
and  most  individual  of  contemporary  English  dramatists.  Among  his 
more  important  plays  are  (The  Admirable  Crichton)  (1902);  (Peter 
Pan)  (1904);  (Alice  Sit-by-the-Fire)  (1905);  (What  Every  Woman 
Knows)  (190S);  (The  Legend  of  Leonora)  (1914),  and  (Der  Tag) 
(1914).  Four  one-act  plays  —  (Pantaloon,)  (The  Twelve-Pound  Look,) 
(Rosalind,)  and  (The  Will) — have  been  published  under  the  title 
(Half  Hours.)  Of  these  dramas  (Peter  Pan)  is  the  most  noteworthy. 
As  (Peter  and  Wendy,)  it  has  been  published  in  the  form  of  a  fairy-tale 
(1911). 

The  plays,  and  the  novels  and  stories,  reveal  different  sides  of  Barric's 
genius.  As  a  writer  of  fiction,  some  of  his  characteristics  are  not  hard 
to  define.  His  wonderful  keenness  of  observation  and  tenacity  of  re- 
membrance of  the  pettinesses  of  daily  existence,  and  his  sensitiveness  to 
the  humorous  aspects  of  their  little  misfits  and  hypocrisies  and  lack  of 
proportion,  might  if  untempered  have  made  him  a  literary  cynic  like 
some  others,  remembered  chiefly  for  the  salience  he  gave  to  the  ugly 
meannesses  of  life  and  the  ironies  of  fate.  But  his  good  angel  added  to 
these  a  gift  of  quick,  sure,  and  spontaneous  sympathy  and  wide  spiritual 
understanding.  This  fills  all  his  higher  work  with  a  generous  appre- 
ciativeness,  a  justness  of  judgment,  a  tenderness  of  feeling,  which 
elevate  as  well  as  charm  the  reader.  He  makes  us  love  the  most  gro- 
tesque characters,  whom  in  life  we  should  dislike  and  avoid,  by  the  sym- 
pathetic fineness  of  his  interpretation  of  their  springs  of  life  and  their 
Vv'arping  by  circumstance.  The  impression  left  on  one  by  the  studies 
of  the  Thrums  community  is  not  primarily  of  intellectual  and  spiritual 
narrowness,  or  niggardly  thrift,  or  dour  natures:  all  are  there,  but  with 
them  are  souls  reaching  after  God  and  often  flowering  into  beauty,  and 
we  reverence  the  quenchless  aspiration  of  maligned  human  nature  for  an 
ideal  far  above  its  reach.  He  achieves  the  rare  feat  of  portraying  every 
pettiness  and  prejudice,  even  the  meannesses  and  dishonors  of  a  poor 
and  hidebound  country  village,  yet  leaving  us  with  both  sincere  respect 
and  warm  liking  for  it;  a  thing  possible  only  to  one  himself  of  a  fine 
nature  as  well  as  of  a  large  mind.  Nor  is  there  any  mawkishness  or 
cheap  surface  sentimentality  in  it  all.  His  pathos  never  makes  you 
wince:  you  can  always  read  his  works  aloud,  the  deadly  and  unfailing 
test  of  anything  flat  or  pinchbeck  in  literature.  His  gift  of  humor  saves 
him  from  this:  true  humor  and  true  pathos  are  always  found  together 
because  they  are  not  two  but  one,  twin  aspects  of  the  very  same  events. 


JAMES    MATTHEW    BARRIE  1 573 

He  who  sees  the  ludicrous  in  misfits  must  see  their  sadness  too;  he  who 
can  laugh  at  a  tumble  must  grieve  over  it:  both  are  inevitable  and  both 
are  coincident. 

As  a  literary  artist,  he  belongs  in  the  foremost  rank.  He  has  that 
sense  of  the  typical  in  incident,  of  the  universal  in  feeling,  and  of  the 
suggestive  in  language,  which  marks  the  chiefs  of  letters.  No  one  can 
express  an  idea  with  fewer  strokes;  he  never  expands  a  sufficient  hint 
into  an  essay.  His  management  of  the  Scotch  dialect  is  masterly: 
he  uses  it  sparingly,  in  the  nearest  form  to  English  compatible  with 
retaining  the  flavor;  he  never  makes  it  so  hard  as  to  interfere  with 
enjoyment;  in  few  dialect  writers  do  we  feel  so  little  alienness. 

<The  Little  Minister)  is  developed  from  the'  real  story  of  a  Scotch 
clergyman  who  brought  home  a  wife  from  afar,  of  so  alien  a  sort  to  the 
general  run  that  the  parish  spent  the  rest  of  her  short  life  in  speculating 
on  her  previous  history  and  weaving  legends  about  her.  Barrie's 
imagined  explanation  is  of  Arabian-Nights  preposterousness  of  incident, 
and  indeed  is  only  a  careless  fairy-tale  in  substance;  but  it  is  so  rich  in 
delicious  filling,  so  full  of  his  best  humor,  sentiment,  character-drawing, 
and  fine  feeling,  that  one  hardly  cares  whether  it  has  any  plot  at  all. 

<Sentimental  Tommy)  is  not  only  a  great  advance  on  (The  Little 
Minister)  in  symmetry  of  construction,  reality  of  matter,  tragic  power, 
and  insight,  but  its  tone  is  different.  Though  as  rich  in  humor,  the 
humor  is  largely  of  a  grim,  bitter,  and  sardonic  sort.  We  feel  that  the 
writer's  sensitive  nature  is  wrung  by  the  swarming  catastrophes  he 
cannot  avert,  the  endless  wrecks  on  the  ocean  of  life  he  cannot  succor, 
and  hardly  less  by  those  spiritual  tragedies  and  ironies  so  much  worse 
than  any  material  misfortune.  The  novel  is  a  study  of  a  sensitive 
mobile  boy,  a  born  poseur,  who  passes  his  life  in  cloud  castles  where  he 
always  dramatizes  himself  as  the  hero,  who  has  no  continuity  of  purpose, 
and  no  capacity  of  self-sacrifice  except  in  spasms  of  impulse,  and  in 
emotional  feeling  which  is  real  to  itself;  a  spiritual  Proteus  who  deceives 
even  himself,  and  only  now  and  then  recognizes  his  own  moral  illusive- 
ness,  like  Hawthorne's  scarecrow-gentleman  before  the  mirror;  but  with 
the  irresistible  instincts  of  the  born  literary  creator  and  constructor. 
These  instincts  spell  danger  to  their  possessor  in  a  world  of  facts.  In 
*Tommy  and  Grizel)  Tommy  has  grown  up  and  won  fame  as  an  analyst 
of  the  emotions.  Confronted  with  difficult  situations,  especially  in  his 
relations  with  the  single-minded  and  sincere  Grizel,  who  loves  him  and 
suffers  through  him,  Tommy  fails.  He  is  merely  an  artist  in  the  emo- 
tions— not  a  man.  All  experience  is  to  him  material  for  books;  he  is 
dominated  by  his  artistic  faculty,  in  spite  of  his  efforts  to  control  it. 
All  that  was  wrong  with  him  (as  his  creator  says)  was  that  he  could  not 
always  be  a  boy,  and  live  in  a  world  of  illusions.  His  death  is  the 
merest  accident.      The  real  tragedy  is  his  failure  to  achieve  manhood. 


1573  ii  JAMES    MATTHEW    BARRIE 

A  delicate  combination  of  the  fantastic  and  the  realistic,  of  the 
improbable  in  incident  and  the  true  in  feeling  and  character,  is  typical 
of  the  «Barrie  play.»  A  feminine  subtlety  of  insight  into  character  and 
a  childlike  concreteness  of  imagination  give  us  truth  to  human  nature 
masked  in  fantasy,  which  ranges  from  the  slight  to  the  most  extravagant. 

In  (The  Admirable  Crichton,>  an  earl,  whose  hobby  is  equality  and 
who  entertains  his  servants  once  a  month  as  social  equals,  is  wrecked 
with  a  party  including  his  family  and  his  butler  on  a  remote  island. 
Crichton  the  butler,  who  had  never  approved  of  the  earl's  hobby,  now 
displays  the  capacity  for  leadership  and  the  practical  sagacity  required 
to  organize  life  on  the  island.  He  is  ruler — they  his  grateful  inferiors. 
The  return  to  conventional  surroundings  throws  them  all  back  into  the 
old  roles.  The  play  is  full  of  whimsical  situations  and  of  keen  satire  of 
social  conventions. 

["What  Every  Woman  Knows)  strikes  the  note  of  fantastic  comedy 
in  Act  I,  when  the  Wylie  brothers,  three  canny  Scotchmen,  surprise  the 
poor  student  John  Shand  breaking  into  their  house  at  night,  to  read  their 
shelf  of  the  best  books.  A  bargain  is  struck:  they  will  educate  Shand, 
if  he  will  marry  their  sister  Maggie,  who  to  their  chagrin  has  been 
unwooed.  Maggie  lacks  what  she  defines  as  charm, — ((a  sort  of  bloom 
on  a  woman;  if  you  have  it,  you  don't  need  to  have  anything  else,  not 
even  education;  and  if  you  don't  have  it,  it  doesn't  matter  what  else 
you  have.))  But  Maggie  has  humor,  penetration,  and  an  inventive 
brain,  which  prove  of  invaluable  (though  unrecognized)  help  to  her 
husband  in  his  Parliamentary  career.  How  she  finally  wins  the  un- 
smiling egoist,  Shand,  to  love,  and  —  hardest  of  tasks  — to  laughter,  is 
the  theme  of  the  play,  worked  out  with  truth  of  characterization  in  an 
atmosphere  of  smiling  make-believe. 

More  fantastic  still  is  the  situation  in  (The  Legend  of  Leonora.) 
Leonora  is  on  trial  for  murdering  a  man,  whom  she  pushed  off  a  moving 
train  because  he  refused  to  shut  a  window,  despite  the  fact  that  her 
little  girl  had  a  cold.  Leonora  feels  no  remorse,  and  discerns  no  dis- 
crepancy between  the  offense  and  the  punishment  of  her  victim.  She 
directs  the  procedure  of  the  court,  establishes  confidential  relations  with 
the  judge,  embarrasses  her  own  lawyer  with  her  explanations  and 
admissions,  hopelessly  ruins  her  case,  legally,  to  the  despair  of  the  judge, 
accompanies  the  jury  when  they  retire,  and  is  pronounced  ((not  guilty.)) 
Extravagantly  burlesque  in  incident,  it  is  full  of  keen  analysis  of  motive 
and  entertaining  satire.  What  it  all  signifies  is  expressed  by  the  judge, 
as  he  dismisses  her: — 

((Leonora,  you  are  one  of  those  round  whom  legends  grow  even  in  their  lifetime. 
This  is  the  sort  of  thing  you  might  have  done  had  your  little  girl  had  a  cold.  And 
this  is  how  we  might  have  acted  had  you  done  it.  .  .  .  You  are  not  of  today,  foolish, 
wayward,    unself-conscious,    communicative    Leonora.     The   ladies    of    today    are 


JAMES    MATTHEW    BARRIE  1573  b 

different — and  wiser.  But  as  we  look  longingly  at  you,  we  see  again,  in  their  habit, 
as  tliey  Hved,  those  out-of-date,  unreasoning,  womanish  creatures,  our  mothers  and 
grandmothers  and  other  dear  ones,  long  ago  loved  and  lost.» 


The  modern  woman,  too,  has  her  say  in  the  clever  one-act  comedy, 
(The  Twelve-Pound  Look,) — the  look  of  the  woman  capable  of  ((going 
on  her  own.)) 

Something  of  JMargaret  Ogilvy  is  in  nearly  all  the  heroines  her  son 
created;  ((he  tries  to  keep  me  out,))  she  said  gleefully,  ((but  he  canna.)) 
Motherliness,  as  Mr.  W.  D.  Howells  has  pointed  out,  is  what  he  is 
always  finding  in  women,  ((who  are  supposed  by  most  dramatists  to  be 
mainly  sweethearts  and  wives  at  the  best,  and  flirts  and  adulteresses  at 
the  worst.  He  has  thus  added  a  grace  to  comedy  which  has  seemed 
beyond  or  beside  the  reach  of  its  art.))  This  motherliness  is  woven  into 
the  fantastic  fabric  even  of  (Peter  Pan,)  revealing  itself  not  only  in  Mrs. 
Darling,  but  in  the  child  Wendy,  who  mothers  the  Lost  Boys  in  the 
Neverland. 

!Peter  Pan)  is  a  fairy  play,  a  dramatization  of  the  topsy-turvy  day- 
dreams of  childhood.  Peter  himself,  playing  his  pipes  like  the  god  Pan, 
and  crowing  delightfully  at  his  own  exploits,  is  the  boy  who  never  grew 
up.  He  flew  away  the  day  he  was  born,  because  he  heard  his  parents 
planning  a  career  for  him,  and  he  wanted  always  to  be  a  little  boy.  So 
he  ran  away  to  Kensington  Gardens  and  lived  for  a  time  among  the 
fairies.  His  adventures  there  are  related  in  (The  Little  White  Bird.)- 
Peter  flies  into  the  nursery  of  the  Darling  children — Wendy,  John,  and 
Michael, — looking  for  his  shadow;  and  presently  they  fly  away  with 
him  to  the  Neverland,  the  enchanted  island  on  the  sea  of  dreams,  where 
the  Pirates  hunt  the  Lost  Boys,  and  the  Redskins  hunt  the  Pirates,  and 
the  Man-eating  Beasts  hunt  the  Redskins,  round  and  round.  Among  the 
delights  of  the  island  are  Tinker  Bell,  a  most  original  fairy,  made  up 
of  a  gleam  of  light  and  a  bell;  a  wonderful  crocodile,  which  has  swallowed 
a  clock  that  goes  on  ticking  inside;  the  terrible  Captain  Hook,  and  the 
pirate  Smee,  with  his  lovable  ways  («for  instance,  after  killing,  it  was  his 
spectacles  he  wiped,  not  his  weapon))).  There  are  thrilling  adventures 
without  end;  and  there  is  the  cosy  underground  home  of  Peter  and  the 
Lost  Boys,  to  which  Wendy  gives  a  charming  air  of  domesticity.  We 
are  over  the  borders  of  Fairyland,  and  yet  have  not  lost  our  old  familiar 
world. 

After  his  victory  over  the  terrible  Hook,  Peter  cries  out  in  the  play, 
((I'm  Youth — eternal  Youth!  I'm  the  sun  rising!  I'm  the  poet's  song. 
I'm  a  little  bird  that  has  broken  out  of  its  egg.  I'm  joy!))  To  the  creator 
of  Peter  Pan  may  be  applied  the  words  he  used  of  Stevenson:  he  is 
((the  spirit  of  boyhood  tugging  at  the  skirts  of  this  old  world  of  ours  and 
compelling  it  to  come  back  and  play.)) 


T574  JAMES   MATTHEW   BARRIE 

THE   COURTING   OF   T'NOWHEAD'S   BELL 
From  <Auld  Licht  Idylls  > 

FOR  two  years  it  had  been  notorious  in  the  square  that  Sam'l 
Dickie  was  thinking  of  courting-  T'nowhead's  Bell,  and  that 
if  little  Sanders  Elshioner  (which  is  the  Thrums  pronunci- 
ation of  Alexander  Alexander)  went  in  for  her,  he  might  prove  a 
formidable  rival.  Sam'l  was  a  weaver  in  the  Tenements,  and  San- 
ders a  coal-carter  whose  trade-mark  was  a  bell  on  his  horse's  neck 
that  told  when  coals  were  coming.  Being  something  of  a  public 
man,  Sanders  had  not,  perhaps,  so  high  a  social  position  as  Sam'l; 
but  he  had  succeeded  his  father  on  the  coal-cart,  while  the  weaver 
had  already  tried  several  trades.  It  had  always  been  against 
Sam'l,  too,  that  once  when  the  kirk  was  vacant  he  had  advised 
the  selection  of  the  third  minister  who  preached  for  it,  on  the 
ground  that  it  came  expensive  to  pay  a  large  number  of  candi- 
dates. The  scandal  of  the  thing  was  hushed  up,  out  of  respect 
for  his  father,  who  was  a  God-fearing  man,  but  Sam'l  was  known 
by  it  in  Lang  Tammas's  circle.  The  coal-carter  was  called  Little 
Sanders,  to  distinguish  him  from  his  father,  who  was  not  much 
more  than  half  his  size.  He  had  grown  up  with  the  name,  and 
its  inapplicability  now  came  home  to  nobody.  Sam'l's  mother  had 
been  more  far-seeing  than  Sanders's.  Her  man  had  been  called 
Sammy  all  his  life,  because  it  was  the  name  he  got  as  a  boy,  so 
when  their  eldest  son  was  born  she  spoke  of  him  as  Sam'l  while 
still  in  his  cradle.  The  neighbors  imitated  her,  and  thus  the 
young  man  had  a  better  start  in  life  than  had  been  granted  to 
Sammy,  his  father. 

It  was  Saturday  evening  —  the  night  in  the  week  when  Auld 
Licht  young  men  fell  in  love.  Sa,m'l  Dickie,  wearing  a  blue 
Glengarry  bonnet  with  a  red  ball  on  the  top,  came  to  the  door  of 
a  one-story  house  in  the  Tenements,  and  stood  there  wriggling, 
for  he  was  in  a  suit  of  tweeds  for  the  first  time  that  week,  and 
did  not  feel  at  one  with  them.  When  his  feeling  of  being  a 
stranger  to  himself  wore  off,  he  looked  up  and  down  the  road, 
which  straggles  between  houses  and  gardens,  and  then,  picking 
his  way  over  the  puddles,  crossed  to  his  father's  hen-house  and 
sat  down  on  it.     He  was  now  on  his  way  to  the  square. 

Eppic  Fargus  was  sitting  on  an  adjoining  dike,  knitting  stock- 
ings, and  Sam'l  looked  at  her  for  a  time. 

**  Is't  yersel,  Eppie  ?  '^  he  said  at  last. 


JAMES  MATTHEW   BARRIE 


1575 


«It's  a'  that,"  said  Eppie. 

"  Hoo's  a'  wi'  ye?"  asked  Sam'l. 

"We're  juist  aff  an'  on,"  replied  Eppie,  cautiously. 

There  was  not  much  more  to  say,  but  as  Sam'l  sidled  off  tht 
hen-house,  he  murmured  politely,  "Ay,  ay."  In  another  minute 
he  would  have  been  fairly  started,  but  Eppie  resumed  the  con- 
versation. 

"Sam'l,"  she  said,  with  a  twinkle  in  her  eye,  "ye  can  tell  Lis- 
beth  Fargus  I'll  likely  be  drappin'  in  on  her  aboot  Munday  or 
Teisday. " 

Lisbeth  was  sister  to  Eppie,  and  wife  of  Thomas  McQuhatty, 
better  known  as  T'nowhead,  which  was  the  name  of  his  farm. 
She  was  thus  Bell's  mistress. 

Sam'l  leaned  against  the  hen-house,  as  if  all  his  desire  to 
depart  had  gone. 

"Hoo  d'ye  kin  I'll  be  at  the  T'nowhead  the  nicht?"  he  asked, 
grinning  in  anticipation. 

"Ou,  I'se  warrant  ye'll  be  after  Bell,"  said  Eppie. 

"Am  no  sae  sure  o'  that,"  said  Sam'l,  trying  to  leer.  He  was 
enjoying  himself  now. 

"  Am  no  sure  o'  that, "  he  repeated,  for  Eppie  seemed  lost  in 
stitches. 

"Sam'l?" 

"  Ay. " 

"  Ye'll  be  speirin'  her  sune  noo,  I  dinna  doot  ?  " 

This  took  Sam'l,  who  had  only  been  courting  Bell  for  a  year 
or  two,  a  little  aback. 

"  Hoo  d'ye  mean,  Eppie  ? "  he  asked. 

"Maybe  ye'll  do't  the  nicht." 

"  Na,   there's  nae  hurry,"  said  Sam'l. 

"Weel,   we're  a'  coontin'  on't,   Sam'l." 

"  Gae  wa  wi'  ye. " 

"What  for  no?" 

"Gae  wa  wi'  ye,"  said  Sam'l  again. 

"Bell's  gei  an'  fond  o'  ye,   Sam'l." 

"Ay,"  said  Sam'l. 

"But  am  dootin'  ye 're  a  fell  billy  wi'  the  lasses." 

"Ay,  oh,  I  d'na  kin,  moderate,  moderate,"  said  Sam'l,  in  high 
delight. 

"I  saw  ye,"  said  Eppie,  speaking  with  a  wire  in  her  mouth, 
"gaen  on  terr'ble  wi'  Mysy  Haggart  at  the  pump  last  Saturday." 


I  en 6  JAMES  MATTHEW  BARRIE 

«We  was  juist  amoosin'  oorsels,**  said  Sam'l. 

*  It'll  be  nae  amoosement  to  Mysy/^  said  Eppie,  "gin  ye  brak 
her  heart.'* 

«Losh,   Eppie, »  said  Sam'l,    "I  didna  think  o'  that.*' 

**  Ye  maun  kin  weel,  Sam'l,  'at  there's  mony  a  lass  wid  jmnp 
at  ye.'* 

"Ou,  weel,**  said  Sam'l,  implying  that  a  man  must  take  these 
things  as  they  come. 

**For  ye 're  a  dainty  chield  to  look  at,   Sam'l.** 

"Do  ye  think  so,  Eppie?  Ay,  ay;  oh,  I  d'na  kin  am  onything 
by  the  ordinar.  ** 

"Ye  mayna  be,**  said  Eppie,  "but  lasses  doesna  do  to  be  ower 
partikler.  ** 

Sam'l  resented  this,   and  prepared  to  depart  again. 

"Ye'll  no  tell  Bell  that?**  he  asked,  anxiously.  - 

«  Tell  her  what  ?  ** 

"Aboot  me  an'  Mysy.** 

"We'll  see  hoo  ye  behave  yersel,   Sam'l.** 

"  No  'at  I  care,  Eppie ;  ye  can  tell  her  gin  ye  like.  I  widna 
think  twice  o'  tellin'  her  mysel.  ** 

"The  Lord  forgie  ye  for  leein',  Sam'l,**  said  Eppie,  as  he  dis- 
appeared down  Tammy  Tosh's  close.  Here  he  came  upon  Ren- 
ders Webster. 

"Ye're  late,   Sam'l,**  said  Renders. 

"  What  for  ?  ** 

"Ou,  I  was  thinkin'  ye  wid  be  gaen  the  length  o'  T'nowhead 
the  nicht,  an'  I  saw  Sanders  Elshioner  makkin's  wy  there  an  oor 
syne.** 

"Did  ye?**  cried  Sam'l,  adding  craftily;  "but  its  naething  to 
me.** 

"Tod,  lad,**  said  Renders;  "gin  ye  dinna  buckle  to,  Sanders'll 
be  carryin'  her  off!** 

Sam'l  flung  back  his  head  and  passed  on. 

"Sam'l!**  cried  Renders  after  him. 

"Ay,**  said  Sam'l,  wheeling  round. 

"Gie  Bell  a  kiss  frae  me.** 

The  full  force  of  this  joke  struck  neither  all  at  once.  Sam'l 
began  to  smile  at  it  as  he  turned  down  the  school-wynd,  and  it 
came  upon  Renders  while  he  was  in  his  garden  feeding  his  ferret. 
Then  he  slapped  his  legs  gleefully,  and  explained  the  conceit  to 
Will'um   Byars,  who  went  into  the  house  and  thought  it  over. 


JAMES  MATTHEW   BARRIE  I^y^ 

There  were  twelve  or  twenty  little  groups  of  men  in  the  square, 
which  was  lighted  by  a  flare  of  oil  suspended  over  a  cadger's 
cart.  Now  and  again  a  staid  young  woman  passed  through  the 
square  with  a  basket  on  her  arm,  and  if  she  had  lingered  long 
enough  to  give  them  time,  some  of  the  idlers  would  have  ad- 
dressed her.  As  it  was,  they  gazed  after  her,  and  then  grinned. 
to  each  other. 

^*Ay,  Sam'l,*^  said  two  or  three  young  men,  as  Sam'l  joined 
them  beneath  the  town  clock. 

**Ay,   Davit, *^  replied  Sam'l. 

This  group  was  composed  of  some  of  the  sharpest  wits  in 
Thrums,  and  it  was  not  to  be  expected  that  they  would  let  this 
opportunity  pass.  Perhaps  when  Sam'l  joined  them  he  knew  what 
was  in  store  for  him. 

«Was  ye  lookin'  for  T'nowhead's  Bell,   Sam'l  ?>>  asked  one. 

"  Or  mebbe  ye  was  wantin'  the  minister  ?  ^^  suggested  another, 
the  same  who  had  walked  out  twice  with  Chirsty  Duff  and  not 
married  her  after  all. 

Sam'l  could  not  think  of  a  good  reply  at  the  moment,  so  he 
laughed  good-naturedly. 

^<  Ondocfbtedly  she's  a  snod  bit  crittur,'^  said  Davit,  archly. 

"An'  michty  clever  wi'  her  fingers,*^  added  Jamie  Deuchars. 

« Man,  I've  thocht  o'  makkin'  up  to  Bell  myself,  ^^  said  Pete 
Ogle.     "  Wid  there  be  ony  chance,   think  ye,    Sam'l  ?  *^ 

"I'm  thinkin'  she  widna  hae  ye  for  her  first,  Pete,*^  replied 
Sam'l,  in  one  of  those  happy  flashes  that  come  to  some  men, 
"but  there's  nae  sayin'  but  what  she  micht  tak  ye  to  finish  up  wi'.** 

The  unexpectedness  of  this  sally  startled  every  one.  Though 
Sam'l  did  not  set  up  for  a  wit,  however,  like  Davit,  it  was  noto- 
rious that  he  could  say  a  cutting  thing  once  in  a  way. 

"  Did  ye  ever  see  Bell  reddin'  up  ?  **  asked  Pete,  recovering 
from  his  overthrow.     He  was  a  man  who  bore  no  malice. 

"It's  a  sicht,**  said  Sam'l,  solemnly. 

"  Hoo  will  that  be  ?  '*  asked  Jamie  Deuchars. 

"It's  weel  worth  yer  while,**  said  Pete,  "to  ging  atower  to 
the  T'nowhead  an'  see.  Ye'll  mind  the  closed-in  beds  i'  the 
kitchen  ?  Ay,  weel,  they're  a  fell  spoilt  crew,  T'nowhead's  litlins, 
an'  no  that  aisy  to  manage.  Th'  ither  lasses  Lisbeth's  ha'en  had 
a  michty  trouble  wi'  them.  When  they  war  i'  the  middle  o' 
their  reddin  up  the  bairns  wid  come  tumlin'  about  the  floor,  but, 
sal,  I  assure  ye,  Bell  didna  fash  lang  wi'  them.     Did  she,  Sam'l  ?  ** 


jcyS  JAMES  MATTHEW   BARRIE 

**She  did  not,'^  said  Sam'l,  dropping  into  a  fine  mode  of  speech 
to  add  emphasis  to  his  remark. 

«ril  tell  ye  what  she  did,"  said  Pete  to  the  others.  « She 
juist  lifted  up  the  litlins,  twa  at  a  time,  an'  flung  them  into  the 
coffin-beds.  Syne  she  snibbit  the  doors  on  them,  an'  keepit  them 
there  till  the  floor  was  dry.  *^ 

**  Ay,   man,   did  she  so  ? "  said  Davit,   admiringly. 

"I've  seen  her  do't  myself,"  said  Sam'l. 

"  There's  no  a  lassie  maks  better  bannocks  this  side  o'  Fetter 
Lums,"  continued  Pete. 

"Her  mither  tocht  her  that,"  said  Sam'l;  "she  was  a  gran' 
han'  at  the  bakin',   Kitty  Ogilvy." 

"  Pve  heard  say, "  remarked  Jamie,  putting  it  this  way  so  as 
not  to  tie  himself  down  to  anything,  "  'at  Bell's  scones  is  equal 
to  Mag  Lunan's." 

"So  they  are,"  said  Sam'l,   almost  fiercely. 

"I  kin  she's  a  neat  han'  at  singein'  a  hen,"  said  Pete. 

"An'  wi't  a',"  said  Davit,  "she's  a  snod,  canty  bit  stocky  in 
her  Sabbath  claes. " 

"  If  onything,   thick  in  the  waist, "  suggested  Jamie. 

"  I  dinna  see  that, "  said  Sam'l. 

"I  d'na  care  for  her  hair  either,"  continued  Jamie,  who  was 
very  nice  in  his  tastes ;  "  something  mair  yallowchy  wid  be  an 
improvement. " 

"A'body  kins,"  growled  Sam'l,  "'at  black  hair's  the  bonniest.* 

The  others  chuckled. 

"Puir  Sam'l!"  Pete  said. 

Sam'l,  not  being  certain  whether  this  should  be  received  with 
a  smile  or  a  frown,  opened  his  mouth  wide  as  a  kind  of  compro- 
mise.    This  was  position  one  with  him  for  thinking  things  over. 

Few  Auld  Lichts,  as  I  have  said,  went  the  length  of  choos- 
ing a  helpmate  for  themselves.  One  day  a  young  man's  friends 
would  see  him  mending  the  washing-tub  of  a  maiden's  mother. 
They  kept  the  joke  until  Saturday  night,  and  then  he  learned 
from  them  what  he  had  been  after.  It  dazed  him  for  a  time, 
but  in  a  year  or  so  he  grew  accustomed  to  the  idea,  and  they 
were  then  married.  With  a  little  help,  he  fell  in  love  just  like 
other  people, 

Sam'l  was  going  the  way  of  the  others,  but  he  found  it  diffi- 
cult to  come  to  the  point.  He  only  went  courting  once  a  week, 
and  he  could  never  take  up  the  running  at  the  place  where  he  left 


JAMES  MATTHEW   BARRIE  le^o 

off  the  Saturday  before.  Thus  he  had  not,  so  far,  made  great 
headway.  His  method  of  making-  up  to  Bell  had  been  to  drop 
in  at  T'nowhead  on  Saturday  nights  and  talk  with  the  farmer 
about  the  rinderpest. 

The  farm-kitchen  was  Bell's  testimonial.  Its  chairs,  tables, 
and  stools  were  scoured  by  her  to  the  whiteness  of  Rob  Angus's 
saw-mill  boards,  and  the  muslin  blind  on  the  window  was 
starched  like  a  child's  pinafore.  Bell  was  brave,  too,  as  well  as 
energetic.  Once  Thrums  had  been  overrun  with  thieves.  It  is 
now  thought  that  there  may  have  been  only  one;  but  he  had  the 
wicked  cleverness  of  a  gang.  Such  was  his  repute,  that  there 
were  weavers  who  spoke  of  locking  their  doors  when  they  went 
from  home.  He  was  not  very  skillful,  however,  being  generally 
caught,  and  when  they  said  they  knew  he  was  a  robber  he  gave 
them  their  things  back  and  went  away.  If  they  had  given  him 
time  there  is  no  doubt  that  he  would  have  gone  off  with  his 
plunder.  One  night  he  went  to  T'nowhead,  and  Bell,  who  slept 
in  the  kitchen,  was  awakened  by  the  noise.  She  knew  who  it 
would  be,  so  she  rose  and  dressed  herself,  and  went  to  look  for 
him  with  a  candle.  The  thief  had  not  known  what  to  do  when 
he  got  in,  and  as  it  was  very  lonely  he  was  glad  to  see  Bell. 
She  told  him  he  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  himself,  and  would 
not  let  him  out  by  the  door  until  he  had  taken  off  his  boots,  so 
as  not  to  soil  the  carpet. 

On  this  Saturday  evening  Sam'l  stood  his  ground  in  the 
square,  until  by  and  by  he  found  himself  alone.  There  were 
other  groups  there  still,  but  his  circle  had  melted  away.  They 
went  separately,  and  no  one  said  good-night.  Each  took  him- 
self off  slowly,  backing  out  of  the  group  tmtil  he  was  fairly 
started. 

Sam'l  looked  about  him,  and  then,  seeing  that  the  others  had 
gone,  walked  round  the  town-house  into  the  darkness  of  the  brae 
that  leads  down  and  then  up  to  the  farm  of  T'nowhead. 

To  get  into  the  good  graces  of  Lisbeth  Fargus  you  had  to 
know  her  ways  and  humor  them.  Sam'l,  who  was  a  student  of 
women,  knew  this,  and  so,  instead  of  pushing  the  door  open  and 
walking  in,  he  went  through  the  rather  ridiculous  ceremony  of 
knocking.  Sanders  Elshioner  was  also  aware  of  this  weakness  of 
Lisbeth,  but  though  he  often  made  up  his  mind  to  knock,  the 
absurdity  of  the  thing  prevented  his  doing  so  when  he  reached 
the   door.     T'nowhead  himself   had   never  got  used  to  his  wife's 


I^So  JAMES  MATTHEW   BARRIE 

refined  notions,  and  when  any  one  knocked  he  always  started  to 
his  feet,  thinking  there  must  be  something  wrong. 

Lisbeth  came  to  the  door,  her  expansive  figure  blocking  the 
way  in. 

«Sam'l,»  she  said. 

«  Lisbeth, »  said  Sam'l. 

He  shook  hands  with  the  farmer's  wife,  knowing  that  she 
liked  it,  but  only  said,  "Ay,  Bell,^*  to  his  sweetheart,  "Ay,  T'now- 
head,**  to  McQuhatty,  and  "It's  yersel,   Sanders,**  to  his  rival. 

They  were  all  sitting  round  the  fire;  T'nowhead  with  his  feet 
on  the  ribs,  wondering  why  he  felt  so  warm,  and  Bell  darned  a 
stocking,  while  Lisbeth  kept  an  eye  on  a  goblet  full  of.  potatoes. 

"Sit  in  to  the  fire,  Sam'l,**  said  the  farmer,  not,  however, 
making  way  for  him. 

"Na,  na,**  said  Sam'l,  "I'm  to  bide  nae  time.**  Then  he  sat 
in  to  the  fire.  His  face  was  turned  away  from  Bell,  and  when 
she  spoke  he  answered  her  without  looking  round.  Sam'l  felt  a 
little  anxious.  Sanders  Elshioner,  who  had  one  leg  shorter  than 
the  other,  but  looked  well  when  sitting,  seemed  suspiciously  at 
home.  He  asked  Bell  questions  out  of  his  own  head,  which  was 
beyond  Sam'l,  and  once  he  said  something  to  her  in  such  a  low 
voice  that  the  others  could  not  catch  it.  T'nowhead  asked  curi- 
ously what  it  was,  and  Sanders  explained  that  he  had  only  said, 
"Ay,  Bell,  the  morn's  the  Sabbath.**  There  was  nothing  start- 
ling in  this,  but  Sam'l  did  not  like  it.  He  began  to  wonder  if 
he  was  too  late,  and  had  he  seen  his  opportunity  would  have 
told  Bell  of  a  nasty  rumor,  that  Sanders  intended  to  go  over  to 
the  Free  Church  if  they  would  make  him  kirk-ofificer. 

Sam'l  had  the  good-will  of  T'nowhead's  wife,  who  liked  a 
polite  man.  Sanders  did  his  best,  but  from  want  of  practice  he 
constantly  made  mistakes.  To-night,  for  instance,  he  wore  his 
hat  in  the  house,  because  he  did  not  like  to  put  up  his  hand  and 
take  it  off.  T'nowhead  had  not  taken  his  off  either,  but  that 
was  because  he  meant  to  go  out  by  and  by  and  lock  the  byre 
door.  It  was  impossible  to  say  which  of  her  lovers  Bell  pre- 
ferred. The  proper  course  with  an  Auld  Licht  lassie  was  to 
prefer  the  man  who  proposed  to  her. 

"Ye '11  bide  a  wee,  an'  hae  something  to  eat?**  Lisbeth  asked 
Sam'l,  with  her  eyes  on  the  goblet 

"  No,   I  thank  ye,  **  said  Sam'l,  with  true  gentility. 

«  Ye'll  better  ?  ** 


JAMES   MATTHEW   BARRIE  jegi 

«I  dinna  think  it." 

"Hoots  ay;  what's  to  hender  ye?" 

"Weel,  since  ye 're  sae  pressin',  I'll  bide." 

No  one  asked  Sanders  to  stay.  Bell  could  not,  for  she  was 
but  the  servant,  and  T'nowhead  knew  that  the  kick  his  wife  had 
given  him  meant  that  he  was  not  to  do  so  either.  Sanders 
whistled  to  show  that  he  was  not  uncomfortable. 

"Ay,  then,   I'll  be  stappin'  ower  the  brae,"  he  said  at  last. 

He  did  not  go,  however.  There  was  sufficient  pride  in  him 
to  get  him  off  his  chair,  but  only  slowly,  for  he  had  to  get 
accustomed  to  the  notion  of  going.  At  intervals  of  two  or  three 
minutes  he  remarked  that  he  must  now  be  going.  In  the  same 
circumstances  Sam'l  would  have  acted  similarly.  For  a  Thrums 
man  it  is  one  of  the  hardest  things  in  life  to  get  away  from 
anywhere. 

At  last  Lisbeth  saw  that  something  must  be  done.  The 
potatoes  were  burning,  and  T'nowhead  had  an  invitation  on  his 
tongue. 

"Yes,  I'll  hae  to  be  movin',»  said  Sanders,  hopelessly,  for  the 
fifth  time. 

"Guid-nicht  to  ye,  then,  Sanders,"  said  Lisbeth.  "Gie  the 
door  a  fling-to  ahent  ye." 

Sanders,  with  a  mighty  effort,  pulled  himself  together.  He 
looked  boldly  at  Bell,  and  then  took  off  his  hat  carefully.  Sam'l 
saw  with  misgivings  that  there  was  something  in  it  which  was 
not  a  handkerchief.  It  was  a  paper  bag  glittering  with  gold 
braid,  and  contained  such  an  assortment  of  sweets  as  lads  bought 
for  their  lasses  on  the  Muckle  Friday. 

"Hae,  Bell,"  said  Sanders,  handing  the  bag  to  Bell  in  an  off- 
hand way,  as  if  it  were  but  a  trifle.  Nevertheless,  he  was  a 
little  excited,  for  he  went  off  without  saying  good -night. 

No  one  spoke.  Bell's  face  was  crimson.  T'nowhead  fidgeted 
on  his  chair,  and  Lisbeth  looked  at  Sam'l.  The  weaver  was 
strangely  calm  and  collected,  though  he  would  have  liked  to 
know  whether  this  was  a  proposal. 

"  Sit  in  by  to  the  table,  Sam'l, "  said  Lisbeth,  trying  to  look 
as  if  things  were  as  they  had  been  before. 

She  put  a  saucerful  of  butter,  salt,  and  pepper  near  the  fire 
to  melt,  for  melted  butter  is  the  shoeing-horn  that  helps  over  a 
meal  of  potatoes.  Sam'l,  however,  saw  what  the  hour  required, 
and  jumping  up,  he  seized  his  bonnet. 


ie82  JAMES  MATTHEW   BARRIE 

"  Hing  the  tatties  highef  up  the  joist,  Lisbeth,*^  he  said  with 
dignity;  "  I'se  be  back  in  ten  meenits.'* 

He  hurried  out  of  the  house,  leaving  the  others  looking  at 
each  other. 

«What  do  ye  think  ? »  asked  Lisbeth. 

«I  d'na  kin,»  faltered  Bell. 

**Thac  tatties  is  lang  o'  comin'  to  the  boil,'*  saic    T'  iowhead. 

In  some  circles  a  lover  who  behaved  like  Sam'l  would  have 
been  suspected  of  intent  upon  his  rival's  life,  but  neither  Bell 
nor  Lisbeth  diet  the  weaver  that  injustice.  In  a  case  of  this 
kind  it  does  not  much  matter  what  T'nowhead  thought. 

The  ten  minutes  had  barely  passed  when  Sam'l  was  back  in 
the  farm-kitchen.  He  was  too  flurried  to  knock  this  time,  and 
indeed  Lisbeth  did  not  expect  it  of  him. 

"  Bell,  hae !  **  he  cried,  handing  his  sweetheart  a  tinsel  bag 
twice  the  size  of  Sanders'  gift. 

*^  Losh  preserve's! '*  exclaimed  Lisbeth;  "I'se  warrant  there's 
a  shillin's  worth.''* 

*^  There's  a'  that,   Lisbeth  —  an'  mair, "  said  Sam'l,   firmly. 

"I  thank  ye,  Sam'l,"  said  Bell,  feeling  an  unwonted  elation  as 
she  gazed  at  the  two  paper  bags  in  her  lap. 

**Ye're  ower  extravegint,   Sam'l,"  Lisbeth  said. 

^*  N-ot  at  all, "  said  Sam'l ;  ^*  not  at  all.  But  I  wouldna  advise 
ye  to  eat  thae  ither  anes,   Bell  —  they're  second   quality." 

Bell  drew  back  a  step  from   Sam'l. 

"  How  do  ye  kin  ? "  asked  the  farmer,  shortly ;  for  he  liked 
Sanders. 

**  I  spcired  i'  the  shop,"  said  Sam'l. 

The  goblet  was  placed  on  a  broken  plate  on  the  table,  with 
the  saucer  beside  it,  and  Sam'l,  like  the  others,  helped  himself. 
What  he  did  was  to  take  potatoes  from  the  pot  with  his  fingers, 
peel  off  their  coats,  and  then  dip  them  into  the  butter.  Lisbeth 
would  have  liked  to  provide  knives  and  forks,  but  she  knew  that 
beyond  a  certain  point  T'nowhead  was  master  in  his  own  house. 
As  for  Sam'l,  he  felt  victory  in  his  hands,  and  began  to  think 
that  he  had  gone  too  far. 

In  the  meantime,  Sanders,  little  witting  that  Sam'l  had  trumped 
his  trick,  was  sauntering  along  the  kirk-wynd  with  his  hat  on  the 
side  of  his  head.      Fortimately  he  did  not  meet  the  minister. 

The  courting  of  T'nowhead's  Bell  reached  its  crisis  one 
Sabbath   about   a  month   after   the  events  above   recorded.      The 


JAMES   MATTHEW   BARRIE  1^83 

minister  was  in  great  force  that  day,  but  it  is  no  part  of  mine 
to  tell  how  he  bore  himself.  I  was  there,  and  am  not  hkely  to 
forget  the  scene.  It  was  a  fateful  Sabbath  for  T'nowhead's  Bell 
and  her  swains,  and  destined  to  be  remembered  for  the  painful 
scandal  which  they  perpetrated  in  their  passion. 

Bell  was  not  in  the  kirk.  There  being  an  infant  of  six  months 
in  the  house,  it  was  a  question  of  either  Lisbeth  or  the  lassie's 
staying  at  home  with  him,  and  though  Lisbeth  was  unselfish  in 
a  general  way,  she  could  not  resist  the  delight  of  going  to 
church.  She  had  nine  children  besides  the  baby,  and  being  but 
a  woman,  it"  was  the  pride  of  her  life  to  march  them  into  the 
T'nowhead  pew,  so  well  watched  that  they  dared  not  disbehave, 
and  so  tightly  packed  that  they  could  not  fall.  The  congregation 
looked  at  that  pew,  the  mothers  enviously,  when  they  sung  the 
lines :  — 

<<  Jerusalem  like  a  city  is 
Compactly  built  together.* 

The  first  half  of  the  service  had  been  gone  through  on  this 
particular  Sunday  without  anything  remarkable  happening.  It 
was  at  the  end  of  the  psalm  which  preceded  the  sermon  that 
Sanders  Elshioner,  who  sat  near  the  door,  lowered  his  head  until 
it  was  no  higher  than  the  pews,  and  in  that  attitude,  looking 
almost  like  a  four-footed  animal,  slipped  out  of  the  church.  In 
their  eagerness  to  be  at  the  sermon,  many  of  the  congregation 
did  not  notice  him,  and  those  who  did,  put  the  matter  by  in 
their  minds  for  future  investigation.  Sam'l,  however,  could  not 
take  it  so  coolly.  From  his  seat  in  the  gallery  he  saw  Sanders 
disappear  and  his  mind  misgave  him.  With  the  true  lover's 
instinct,  he  understood  it  all.  Sanders  had  been  struck  by  the 
fine  turn-out  in  the  T'nowhead  pew.  Bell  was  alone  at  the  farm. 
What  an  opportunity  to  work  one's  way  up  to  a  proposal. 
T'nowhead  was  so  overrun  with  children  that  such  a  chance  sel- 
dom occurred,  except  on  a  Sabbath.  Sanders,  doubtless,  was  o£E 
to  propose,  and  he,  Sam'l,  was  left  behind. 

The  suspense  was  terrible.  Sam'l  and  Sanders  had  both 
known  all  along  that  Bell  would  take  the  first  of  the  two  who 
asked  her.  Even  those  who  thought  her  proud  admitted  that  she 
was  modest.  Bitterly  the  weaver  repented  having  waited  so  long. 
Now  it  was  too  late.  In  ten  minutes  Sanders  would  be  at 
T'nowhead;  in  an  hour  all  would  be  over.     Sam'l  rose  to  his  feet 


jr84  JAMES   MATTHEW   BARRIE 

in  a  daze.  His  mother  pulled  him  down  by  the  coat-tail,  and 
his  father  shook  him,  thinking  he  was  walking  in  his  sleep.  He 
tottered  past  them,  however,  hurried  up  the  aisle,  which  was  so 
narrow  that  Dan'l  Ross  could  only  reach  his  seat  by  walking 
sideways,  and  was  gone  before  the  minister  could  do  more  than 
stop  in  the  middle  of  a  whirl  and  gape  in  horror  after  him. 

A  number  of  the  congregation  felt  that  day  the  advantage  of 
sitting  in  the  laft.  What  was  a  mystery  to  those  down-stairs  was 
revealed  to  them.  From  the  gallery  windows  they  had  a  fine 
open  view  to  the  south;  and  as  Sam'l  took  the  common,  which 
was  a  short  cut,  though  a  steep  ascent,  to  T'nowh'ead,  he  was 
never  out  of  their  line  of  vision.  Sanders  was  not  to  be  seen, 
but  they  guessed  rightly  the  reason  why.  Thinking  he  had 
ample  time,  he  had  gone  round  by  the  main  road  to  save  his 
boots  —  perhaps  a  little  scared  by  what  was  coming.  Sam'l's 
design  was  to  forestall  him  by  taking  the  shorter  path  over  the 
bum  and  up  the  commonty. 

It  was  a  race  for  a  wife,  and  several  onlookers  in  the  gallery 
braved  the  minister's  displeasure  to  see  who  won.  Those  who 
favored  Sam'l's  suit  exultingly  saw  him  leap  the  stream,  while 
the  friends  of  Sanders  fixed  their  eyes  on  the  top  of  the  common 
where  it  ran  into  the  road.  Sanders  must  come  into  sight  there, 
and  the  one  who  reached  this  point  first  would  get  Bell. 

As  Auld  Lichts  do  not  walk  abroad  on  the  Sabbath,  Sanders 
would  probably  not  be  delayed.  The  chances  were  in  his  favor. 
Had  it  been  any  other  day  in  the  week,  Sam'l  might  have  run. 
So  some  of  the  congregation  in  the  gallery  were  thinking,  when 
suddenly  they  saw  him  bend  low  and  then  take  to  his  heels.  He 
had  caught  sight  of  Sanders's  head  bobbing  over  the  hedge  that 
separated  the  road  from  the  common,  and  feared  that  Sanders 
might  see  him.  The  congregation  who  could  crane  their  necks 
sufficiently  saw  a  black  object,  which  they  guessed  to  be  the 
carter's  hat,  crawling  along  the  hedge-top.  For  a  moment  it  was 
motionless,  and  then  it  shot  ahead.  The  rivals  had  seen  each 
other.  It  was  now  a  hot  race.  Sam'l,  dissembling  no  longer, 
clattered  up  the  common,  becoming  smaller  and  smaller  to  the 
onlookers  as  he  neared  the  top.  More  than  one  person  in  the 
gallery  almost  rose  to  their  feet  in  their  excitement.  Sam'l  had 
it.  No,  Sanders  was  in  front.  Then  the  two  figures  disappeared 
from  view.  They  seemed  to  run  into  each  other  at  the  top  of 
the  brae,  and  no  one  could  say  who  was  first.     The  congregation 


JAMES   MATTHEW   BARRIE  jege 

looked  at  one  another.  Some  of  them  perspired.  But  the  min- 
ister held  on  his  course. 

Sam'l  had  just  been  in  time  to  cut  Sanders  out.  It  was  the 
weaver's  saving-  that  Sanders  saw  this  when  his  rival  turned  the 
corner;  for  Sam'l  was  sadly  blown.  Sanders  took  in  the  situa- 
tion and  gave  in  at  once.  The  last  hundred  yards  of  the  dis- 
tance he  covered  at  his  leisure,  and  when  he  arrived  at  his 
destination  he  did  not  go  in.  It  was  a  fine  afternoon  for  the 
time  of  year,  and  he  went  round  to  have  su  look  at  the  pig, 
about  which  T'nowhead  was  a  little  sinfully  puffed  up. 

^*  Ay,  **  said  Sanders,  digging  his  fingers  critically  into  the 
grunting  animal ;    "  quite  so.  ^^ 

"  Grumph !  '*  said  the  pig,  getting  reluctantly  to  his  feet. 

"  Ou  ay ;    yes,  *'  said  Sanders,   thoughtfully. 

Then  he  sat  down  on  the  edge  of  the  sty,  and  looked  long 
and  silently  at  an  empty  bucket.  But  whether  his  thoughts  were 
of  T'nowhead's  Bell,  whom  he  had  lost  forever,  or  of  the  food 
the  farmer  fed  his  pig  on,  is  not  known. 

**  Lord  preserve's!  Are  ye  no  at  the  kirk  ?  *^  cried  Bell,  nearly 
dropping  the  baby  as  Sam'l  broke  into  the  room. 

«Bell!»  cried  Sam'l. 

Then  T'nowhead's  Bell  knew  that  her  hour  had  come. 

"Sam'l,*^  she  faltered. 

^^  Will  ye  hae's,  Bell  ?  ^^  demanded  Sam'l,  glaring  at  her  sheep- 
ishly. 

**Ay, '^  answered  Bell. 

Sam'l  fell  into  a  chair. 

^*  Bring's  a  drink  o'  water.   Bell,  **  he  said. 

But  Bell  thought  the  occasion  required  milk,  and  there  was 
none  in  the  kitchen.  She  went  out  to  the  byre,  still  with  the 
baby  in  her  amis,  and  saw  Sanders  Elshioner  sitting  gloomily  on 
the  pig- sty. 

«Weel,  Bell,»  said  Sanders. 

^*  I  thocht  ye'd  been  at  the  kirk,   Sanders,  '*  said  Bell. 

Then  there  was  a  silence  between  them. 

"  Has  Sam'l  speired  ye,   Bell  ?  ^'  asked  Sanders,   stolidly. 

^*  Ay,  *^  said  Bell  again,  and  this  time  there  was  a  tear  in  her 
eye.  Sanders  was  little  better  than  an  "  orra  man,"  and  Sam'l  was 
a  weaver,  and  yet  — 

But  it  was  too  late  now.  Sanders  gave  the  pig  a  vicious  poke 
with  a  stick,  and  when  it  had  ceased  to  grunt,  Bell  was  back  in 

III lOO 


1^86  JAMES   MATTHEW   BARRIE 

the  kitchen.  She  had  forgotten  about  the  milk,  however,  and 
Sam'l  only  got  water  after  all. 

In  after  days,  when  the  story  of  Bell's  wooing-  was  told,  there 
were  some  who  held  that  the  cir.ciim stances  would  have  almost 
justified  the  lassie  in  giving  Sam'l  the  go-by.  But  these  perhaps 
forgot  that  her  other  lover  was  in  the  same  predicament  as  the 
accepted  one  —  that,  of  the  two,  indeed,  he  was  the  more  to 
blame,  for  he  set  off  to  T'nowhead  on  the  Sabbath  of  his  own 
accord,  while  Sam'l  only  ran  after  him.  And  then  there  is  no 
one  to  say  for  certain  whether  Bell  heard  of  her  suitors'  delin- 
quencies until  Lisbeth's  return  from  the  kirk.  Sam'l  could  never 
remember  whether  he  told  her,  and  Bell  was  not  sure  whether, 
if  he  did,  she  took  it  in.  Sanders  was  greatly  in  demand  for 
weeks  after  to  tell  what  he  knew  of  the  affair,  but  though  he 
was  twice  asked  to  tea  to  the  manse  among  the  trees,  and  sub- 
jected thereafter  to  ministerial  cross-examinations,  this  is  all  he 
told.  He  remained  at  the  pig-sty  until  Sam'l  left  the  farm,  when 
he  joined  him  at  the  top  of  the  brae,  and  they  went  home 
together. 

*^It's  yersel,   Sanders,*^  said  Sam'l. 

"It  is  so,   Sam'l,**  said  Sanders. 

**Very  cauld,  **  said  Sam'l. 

"  Blawy,  **  assented  Sanders. 

After  a  pause  — 

"Sam'l,**  said  Sanders. 

«Ay.** 

"I'm  hcarin'  yer  to  be  mairit.** 

«  Ay.  ** 

"Weel,   Sam'l,   she's  a  snod  bit  lassie.** 

"Thank  ye,**  said  Sam'l. 

"I  had  ance  a  kin'  o'  notion  o'  Bell  mysel, **  continued  Sanders, 

«  Ye  had  ?  ** 

"Yes,    Sam'l;    but  I  thocht  better  o't.** 

"  Hoo  d'ye  mean  ?  **  asked  Sam'l,  a  little  anxiously. 

"Weel,   Sam'l,  mairitch  is  a  terrible  responsibeelity.  ** 

"It  is  so,**  said  Sam'l,  wincing. 

"An'  no  the  thing  to  take  up  withoot  conseederation.** 

"But  it's  a  blessed  and  honorable  state,  Sanders;  ye've  heard 
the  minister  on't.** 

"  They  say,  **  continued  the  relentless  Sanders,  "  'at  the  minis- 
ter doesna  get  on  sair  wi'  the  wife  himsel.** 


JAMES   MATTHEW   BARRIE  1 587 

«So  they  do/^  cried  Sam'l,  with  a  sinking  at  the  heart. 

<<I've  been  telt,"  Sanders  went  on,  "'at  gin  you  can  get  the 
upper  han'  o'  the  wife  for  awhile  at  first,  there's  the  mair  chance 
o'  a  harmonious  exeestence.  ^^ 

« Bell's  no  the  lassie,^*  said  Sam'l,  appealingly,  "to  thwart  her 
man.^^ 

Sanders  smiled. 

«  D'ye  think  she  is,   Sanders  ?  '^ 

"Weel,  Sam'l,  I  d'na  want  to  fluster  ye,  but  she's  been  ower 
lang  wi'  Lisbeth  Fargus  no  to  hae  learnt  her  ways.  An'  a'body 
kins  what  a  life  T'nowhead  has  wi'  her.** 

"  Guid  sake,  Sanders,  hoo  did  ye  no  speak  o'  this  afoore  ?  ® 

«I  thocht  ye  kent  o't,    Sam'l.'* 

They  had  now  reached  the  square,  and  the  U.  P.  kirk  was 
coming  out.     The  Auld  Licht  kirk  would  be  half  an  hour  yet. 

"But,  Sanders,"  said  Sam'l,  brightening  up,  "ye  was  on  yer 
wy  to  spier  her  yersel.** 

"  I  was,  Sam'l,  '*  said  Sanders,  "  and  I  canna  but  be  thankfu' 
ye  was  ower  quick  for's. " 

"Gin't  hadna  been  for  you,'*  said  Sam'l,  "I  wid  never  hae 
thocht  o't.» 

"  I'm  sayin'  naething  agin  Bell,  '*  pursued  the  other,  "  but,  man 
Sam'l,  a  body  should  be  mair  deleeberate  in  a  thing  o'  the  kind." 

"  It  was  michty  hurried,  '*  said  Sam'l,   wof ully. 

"It's  a  serious  thing  to  spier  a  lassie,**  said  Sanders. 

"It's  an  awfu'  thing,**  said  Sam'l. 

"But  we'll  hope  for  the  best,**  added  Sanders,  in  a  hopeless 
voice. 

They  were  close  to  the  Tenements  now,  and  Sam'l  looked  as 
if  he  were  on  his  way  to  be  hanged. 

"  Sam'l  ?  ** 

"Ay,   Sanders.** 

"  Did  ye  —  did  ye  kiss  her,   Sam'l  ?  ** 

«Na.** 

«  Hoo  ?  *> 

"There's  was  varra  little  time,   Sanders.** 

"Half  an  'oor,**  said  Sanders. 

"  Was  there  ?  Man  Sanders,  to  tell  ye  the  truth,  I  never 
thocht  o't.** 

Then  the  soul  of  Sanders  Elshioner  was  filled  with  contempt 
for  Sam'l  Dickie. 


1^88  JAMES   MATTHEW   BARRIE 

The  scandal  blew  over.  At  first  it  was  expected  that  the 
minister  would  interfere  to  prevent  the  union,  but  beyond  inti- 
matinpf  from  the  pulpit  that  the  souls  of  Sabbath-breakers  were 
beyond  praying  for,  and  then  praying  for  Sam'l  and  Sanders  at 
great  length,  with  a  word  thrown  in  for  Bell,  he  let  things  take 
their  course.  Some  said  it  was  because  he  was  always  fright- 
ened lest  his  young  men  should  intermarry  with  other  denomina- 
tions, but  Sanders  explained  it  differently  to  Sam'l. 

"I  hav'na  a  word  to  say  agin  the  minister,^'  he  said;  "they're 
gran'  prayers,   but   Sam'l,  he's  a  mairit  man  himsel.  *^ 

"  He's  a'  the  better  for  that,   Sanders,  isna  he  ?  ** 

"Do  ye  no  see,**  asked  Sanders,  compassionately,  "'at  he's 
tryin'  to  mak  the  best  o't?" 

"  Oh,   Sanders,  man !  **  said  Sam'l. 

"Cheer  up,   Sam'l,**  said  Sanders;  "it'll  sune  be  ower. ** 

Their  having  been  rival  suitors  had  not  interfered  with  their 
friendship.  On  the  contrary,  while  they  had  hitherto  been  mere 
acquaintances,  they  became  inseparables  as  the  wedding-day  drew 
near.  It  was  noticed  that  they  had  much  to  vSay  to  each  other, 
and  that  when  they  could  not  get  a  room  to  themselves  they 
wandered  about  together  in  the  churchyard.  When  Sam'l  had 
anything  to  tell  Bell,  he  sent  Sanders  to  tell  it,  and  Sanders  did 
as  he  was  bid.  There  was  nothing  that  he  would  not  have  done 
for  Sam'l. 

The  more  obliging  Sanders  was,  however,  the  sadder  Sam'l 
grew.  He  never  laughed  now  on  Saturdays,  and  sometimes  his 
loom  was  silent  half  the  day.  Sam'l  felt  that  Sanders's  was  the 
kindness  of  a  friend  for  a  dying  man. 

It  was  to  be  a  penny  wedding,  and  Lisbeth  Fargus  said  it 
was  delicacy  that  made  Sam'l  superintend  the  fitting-up  of  the 
barn  by  deputy.  Once  he  came  to  see  it  in  person,  but  he 
looked  so  ill  that  Sanders  had  to  see  him  home.  This  was 
on  the  Thursday  afternoon,  and  the  wedding  was  fixed  for  Fri- 
day. 

"Sanders,  Sanders,**  said  vSam'l,  in  a  voice  strangely  imlike 
his  own,   "it'll  a'  be  ower  by  this  time  the  morn.** 

"It  will,**  said  Sanders. 

"  If  I  had  only  kent  her  langer,  **  continued  Sam'l. 

"  It  wid  hae  been  safer,  **  said  Sanders. 

"  Did  ye  see  the  yallow  floor  in  Bell's  bonnet  ?  **  asked  the 
accepted  swain. 


JAMES   MATTHEW   BARRIE  I^g^ 

**Ay,  **  said  Sanders,  reluctantly. 

"  I'm  dootin' —  I'm  sair  dootin'  she's  but  a  flichty,  licht-hearted 
crittur,   after  a'.'^ 

^'  I  had  ay  my  suspeecions  o't,  *^  said  Sanders. 

"Ye  hae  kent  her  lang-er  than  me,**  said  Sam'l. 

"Yes,**  said  Sanders,  "but  there's  nae  gettin'  at  the  heart  o' 
women.     Man  Sam'l,   they're  desperate  cunnin'.** 

"I'm  dootin't;    I'm  sair  dootin't.** 

"  It'll  be  a  wamin'  to  ye,  Sam'l,  no  to  be  in  sic  a  hurry  i' 
the  futur,**  said  Sanders. 

Sam'l  groaned. 

"  Ye'll  be  gaein  up  to  the  manse  to  arrange  wi'  the  minister 
the  morn's  mornin',**  continued  Sanders,  in  a  subdued  voice. 

Sam'l  looked  wistfully  at  his  friend. 

"  I  canna  do't,   Sanders,  **  he  said,   "  I  canna  do't.  ** 

"Ye  maun,**  said  Sanders. 

"It's  aisy  to  speak,**  retorted  Sam'l,   bitterly. 

"  We  have  a'  oor  troubles,  Sam'l,  said  Sanders,  soothingly, 
"  an'  every  man  maun  bear  his  ain  burdens.  Johnny  Davie's 
wife's  dead,  an'  he's  no  repinin'.** 

"Ay,**  said  Sam'l,  "but  a.  death's  no  a  mairitch.  We  hae  haen 
deaths  in  our  family,   too.** 

"It  may  a'  be  for  the  best,**  added  Sanders,  "an'  there  wid 
be  a  michty  talk  i'  the  hale  country-side  gin  ye  didna  ging  to 
the  minister  like  a  man.** 

"  I  maun  hae  langer  to  think  o't,  **  said  Sam'l. 

"  Bell's  mairitch  is  the  mom,  **  said  Sanders,  decisively. 

Sam'l  glanced  up  with  a  wild  look  in  his  eyes. 

"  Sanders !  **  he  cried. 

"Sam'l!** 

"  Ye  hae  been  a  guid  friend  to  me,  Sanders,  in  this  sair 
affliction.  ** 

"Nothing  ava,**  said  Sanders;   "  doimt  mention't.** 

"  But,  Sanders,  ye  canna  deny  but  what  your  rinnin  oot  o' 
the  kirk  that  awfu'  day  was  at  the  bottom  o't  a'.** 

"  It  was  so,  **  said  Sanders,  bravely. 

"An'  ye  used  to  be  fond  o'  Bell,    Sanders.'* 

"  I  dinna  deny't.  ** 

"Sanders,  laddie,**  said  Sam'l,  bending  forward  and  speaking 
in  a  wheedling  voice,   "  I  aye  thocht  it  was  you  she  likit.  ** 

"  I  had  some  sic  idea  mysel,  **  said  Sanders. 


J  ego  JAMES   MATTHEW   BARRIE 

"  Sanders,  I  canna  think  to  pairt  twa  fowk  sae  weel  suited  to 
ane  anither  as  you  an'  Bell.** 

"  Canna  ye,   Sam'l  ?  ** 

**  She  wid  make  ye  a  g'uid  wife,  Sanders.  I  hae  studied  her 
weel,  and  she's  a  thrifty,  douce,  clever  lassie.  Sanders,  there's 
no  the  like  o'  her.  Mony  a  time,  Sanders,  I  hae  said  to  mysel, 
There's  a  lass  ony  man  micht  be  prood  to  tak,  A 'body  says  the 
same,  Sanders.  There's  nae  risk  ava,  man;  nane  to  speak  o*. 
Tak  her,  laddie,  tak  her,  Sanders,  it's  a  grand  chance,  Sanders. 
She's  yours  for  the  speirin.     I'll  gie  her  up,  Sanders." 

^*  Will  ye,   though  ? "  said  Sanders. 

«What  d'ye  think  ? »  asked  Sam'l. 

**  If  ye  wid  rayther,  **  said  Sanders,  politely. 

"There's  my  han'  on't,"  said  Sam'l.  "Bless  ye,  Sanders; 
ye've  been  a  true  frien'  to  me.'* 

Then  they  shook  hands  for  the  first  time  in  their  lives;  and 
soon  afterward  Sanders  struck  up  the  brae  to  T'nowhead. 

Next  morning  Sanders  Elshioner,  who  had  been  very  busy 
the  night  before,  put  on  his  Sabbath  clothes  and  strolled  up  to 
the  manse. 

"But  —  but  where  is  Sam'l?**  asjced  the  minister.  "I  must 
see  himself.  ** 

"  It's  a  new  arrangement,**  said  Sanders. 

"  What  do  you  mean,   Sanders  ?  ** 

"Bell's  to  marry  me,**  explained  Sanders. 

"But  —  but  what  does  Sam'l  say?** 

"He's  willin',**  said  Sanders. 

"And  Bell?** 

"She's  willin',  too.     She  prefers  it.** 

"It  is  unusual,**  said  the  minister. 

"It's  a'  richt,**  said  Sanders. 

"Well,  you  know  best,**  said  the  minister. 

"You  see,  the  hoose  was  taen,  at  ony  rate,**  continued  San- 
ders.    "An'  I'll  juist  ging  in  til't  instead  o'  Sam'l.** 

"Quite  so.** 

"An'  I  cudna   think  to  disappoint  the  lassie.** 

"Your  sentiments  do  you  credit,  Sanders,**  said  the  minister; 
•^but  I  hope  you  do  not  enter  upon  the  blessed  state  of  matri- 
mony without  full  consideration  of  its  responsibilities.  It  is  a 
serious  business,  marriage.** 

"It's  a'  that,**  said  Sanders;  "but  I'm  willin'  to  stan'  the  risk.** 


JAMES   MATTHEW   BARRIE  I^^I 

So,  as  soon  as  it  could  be  done,  Sanders  Elshioner  took  to 
wife  T'nowhead's  Bell,  and  I  remember  seeing  Sam'l  Dickie  try- 
ing to  dance  at  the  penny  wedding. 

Years  afterward  it  was  said  in  Thrums  that  Sam'l  had  treated 
Bell  badly,   but  he  was  never  sure  about  it  himself. 

"It  was  a  near  thing  —  a  michty  near  thing,"  he  admitted  in 
the  square. 

"  They  say,  '*  some  other  weaver  would  remark,  "  'at  it  was 
you  Bell  liked  best." 

"I  d'na  kin,"  Sam'l  would  reply,  "but  there's  nae  doot  the 
lassie  was  fell  fond  o'  me.  Ou,  a  mere  passin'  fancy's  ye  micht 
say.  * 


JESS   LEFT  ALONE 
From  ^A  Window  in  Thrums  > 

THERE  may  be  a  few  who  care  to  know  how  the  lives  of  Jess 
and  Hendry  ended.  Leeby  died  in  the  back  end  of  the  year 
I  have  been  speaking  of,  and  as  I  was  snowed  up  in  the 
school-house  at  the  time,  I  heard  the  news  from  Gavin  Birse  too 
late  to  attend  her  funeral.  She  got  her  death  on  the  commonty 
one  day  of  sudden  rain,  when  she  had  run  out  to  bring  in  her 
washing,  for  the  terrible  cold  she  woke  with  next  morning  carried 
her  off  very  quickly.  Leeby  did  not  blame  Jamie  for  not  coming 
to  her,  nor  did  I,  for  I  knew  that  even  in  the  presence  of  death 
the  poor  must  drag  their  chains.  He  never  got  Hendry's  letter 
with  the  news,  and  we  know  now  that  he  was  already  in  the 
hands  of  her  who  played  the  devil  with  his  life.  Before  the 
spring  came  he  had  been  lost  to  Jess. 

"  Them  'at  has  got  sae  rhony  blessin's  mair  than  the  gener- 
ality," Hendry  said  to  me  one  day,  when  Craigiebuckle  had  given 
me  a  lift  into  Thrums,  "has  nae  shame  if  they  would  pray  aye 
for  mair.  The  Lord  has  gi'en  this  hoose  sae  muckle,  'at  to  pray 
for  mair  looks  like  no  bein'  thankfu'  for  what  we've  got.  Ay, 
but  I  canna  help  pray  in'  to  Him  'at  in  His  great  mercy  he'll  tak 
Jess  afore  me.  Noo  'at  Leeby's  gone,  an'  Jamie  never  lets  us 
hear  frae  him,  I  canna  gulp  doon  the  thocht  o'  Jess  bein'  left 
alane." 

This  was  a  prayer  that  Hendry  may  be  pardoned  for  having 
so  often  in  his  heart,   though  God  did  not  think  fit  to  grant  it. 


JH02  JAMES   MATTHEW   BARRIE 

In  Thrums,  when  a  weaver  tiied,  his  women-folk  had  to  take  his 
seat  at  the  loom,  and  those  who,  by  reason  of  infirmities,  could 
not  do  so,  went  to  a  place,  the  name  of  which,  I  thank  God,  I 
am  not  compelled  to  write  in  this  chapter.  I  could  not,  even  at 
this  day,  have  told  any  episode  in  the  life  of  Jess  had  it  ended 
in  the  poor  house. 

Hendry  would  probably  have  recovered  from  the  fever  had 
not  this  terrible  dread  darkened  his  intellect  when  he  was  still 
prostrate.  He  was  lying  in  the  kitchen  when  I  saw  him  last  in 
life,  and  his  parting  words  must  be  sadder  to  the  reader  than 
they  were  to  me. 

**Ay,  richt  ye  are,"  he  said,  in  a  voice  that  had  become  a 
child's;  "I  hae  muckle,  muckle  to  be  thankfu'  for,  an'  no  the 
least  is  'at  baith  me  an'  Jess  has  aye  belonged  to  a  bural  society. 
We  hae  nae  cause  to  be  anxious  aboot  a'  thing  bein'  dune  respect- 
able aince  we're  gone.  It  was  Jess  'at  insisted  on  oor  joinin': 
a'  the  wisest  things  I  ever  did  I  was  put  up  to  by  her.** 

I  parted  from  Hendry,  cheered  by  the  doctor's  report,  but 
the  old  weaver  died  a  few  days  afterward.  His  end  was  mourn- 
ful, yet  I  can  recall  it  now  as  the  not  imworthy  close  of  a  good 
man's  life.  One  night  poor  worn  Jess  had  been  helped  ben 
into  the  room,  Tibbie  Birse  having  undertaken  to  sit  up  with 
Hendry. 

Jess  slept  for  the  first  time  for  many  days,  and  as  the  night 
was  dying  Tibbie  fell  asleep  too.  Hendry  had  been  better  than 
usual,  lying  quietly,  Tibbie  said,  and  the  fever  was  gone.  About 
three  o'clock  Tibbie  woke  and  rose  to  mend  the  fire.  Then  she 
saw  that  Hendry  was  not  in  his  bed. 

Tibbie  went  ben  the  house  in  her  stocking  soles,  but  Jess 
heard  her. 

"  What  is't,  Tibbie  ?  **  she  asked,   anxiously. 

"Ou,   it's  no  naething, **  Tibbie  said;   "he's  lyin'  rale  quiet." 

Then  she  went  up  to  the  attic.  Hendry  was  not  in  the 
house. 

She  opened  the  door  gently  and  stole  out.  It  was  not  snow- 
ing, but  there  had  been  a  heavy  fall  two  days  before,  and  the 
night  was  windy.  A  tearing  gale  had  blown  the  upper  part  of 
the  brae  clear,  and  from  T'nowhead's  fields  the  snow  was  rising 
like  smoke.     Tibbie  ran  to  the  farm  and  woke  up  T'nowhead. 

For  an  hour  they  looked  in  vain  for  Hendry.  At  last  some 
one  asked  who  was  working  in  Elshioner's    shop  all   night.      This 


JAMES   MATTHEW   BARRIE  len^ 

was  the  long  earthen-floored  room  in  which  Hendry's  loom  stood 
with  three  others. 

<*  It'll  be  Sanders  Whamond  likely/*  T'nowhead  said,  and  the 
other  men  nodded. 

But  it  happened  that  T'nowhead's  Bell,  who  had  flung  on  a 
wrapper,  and  hastened  across  to  sit  with  Jess,  heard  of  the  light 
in  Elshioner's  shop. 

"It's  Hendry,**  she  cried;  and  then  every  one  moved  toward 
the  workshop. 

The  light  at  the  diminutive,  dam-covered  window  was  pale 
and  dim,  but  Bell,  who  was  at  the  house  first,  could  make  the 
most  of  a  cruizey's  glimmer. 

"  It's  him, "  she  said ;  and  then,  with  swelling  throat,  she  ran 
back  to  Jess. 

The  door  of  the  workshop  was  wide  open,  held  against  the 
wall  by  the  wind.  T'nowhead  and  the  others  went  in.  The 
cruizey  stood  on  the  little  window.  Hendry's  back  was  to  the 
door,  and  he  was  leaning  forward  on  the  silent  loom.  He  had 
been  dead  for  some  time,  but  his  fellow-workers  saw  that  he 
must  have  weaved  for  nearly  an  hour. 

So  it  came  about  that  for  the  last  few  months  of  her  pilgrim- 
age Jess  was  left  alone.  Yet  I  may  not  say  that  she  was  alone. 
Jamie,  who  should  have  been  with  her,  was  undergoing  his  own 
ordeal  far  away;  where,  we  did  not  now  even  know.  But 
though  the  poorhouse  stands  in  Thrums,  where  all  may  see  it, 
the   neighbors    did   not   think    only    of   themselves. 

Than  Tammas  Haggart  there  can  scarcely  have  been  a  poorer 
man,  but  Tammas  was  the  first  to  come  forward  with  offer  of 
help.  To  the  day  of  Jess's  death  he  did  not  once  fail  to  carry 
her  water  to  her  in  the  morning,  and  the  luxuriously  living  men 
of  Thrums  in  these  present  days  of  pumps  at  every  corner,  can 
hardly  realize  what  that  meant.  Often  there  were  lines  of  people 
at  the  well  by  three  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  each  had  to 
wait  his  turn.  Tammas  filled  his  own  pitcher  and  pan,  and  then 
had  to  take  his  place  at  the  end  of  the  line  with  Jess's  pitcher 
and  pan,  to  wait  his  turn  again.  His  own  house  was  in  the 
Tenements,  far  from  the  brae  in  winter  time,  but  he  always  said 
to  Jess  it  was  "naething  ava.  ** 

Every  Saturday  old  Robbie  Angus  sent  a  bag  of  sticks  and 
shavings  from  the  sawmill  by  his  little  son  Rob,  who  was  after- 
ward to  become  a  man  for  speaking  about  at  nights.     Of   all   the 


I2P4  JAMES   MATTHEW   BARRIE 

friends  that  Jess  and  Hendry  had,  T'nowhead  was  the  ablest  to 
help,  and  the  sweetest  memory  I  have  of  the  farmer  and  his 
wife  is  the  delicate  way  they  offered  it.  You  who  read  will  see 
Jess  wince  at  the  offer  of  charity.  But  the  poor  have  fine  feel- 
ings beneath  the  grime,  as  you  will  discover  if  you  care  to  look 
for  them;  and  when  Jess  said  she  would  bake  if  anyone  would 
buy,  you  would  wonder  to  hear  how  many  kindly  folk  came  to 
her  door  for   scones. 

She  had  the  house  to  herself  at  nights,  but  Tibbie  Birse  was 
with  her  early  in  the  morning,  and  other  neighbors  dropped  in. 
Not  for  long  did  she  have  to  wait  the  summons  to  the  better 
home. 

^*  Na,  ^^  she  said  to  the  minister,  who  has  told  me  that  he  was 
a  better  man  from  knowing  her,  "my  thocht  is  no  nane  set  on 
the  vanities  o'  the  world  noo.  I  kenna  hoo  I  could  ever  hae 
haen  sic  an  ambeetion  to  hae  thae  stuff-bottomed  chairs.^* 

I  have  tried  to  keep  away  from  Jamie,  whom  the  neighbors 
sometimes  upbraided  in  her  presence.  It  is  of  him  you  who 
read  would  like  to  hear,  and  I  cannot  pretend  that  Jess  did  not 
sit  at  her  window  looking  for  him. 

"Even  when  she  was  baking  Tibbie  told  me,  "she  aye  had 
an  eye  on  the  brae.  If  Jamie  had  come  at  ony  time  when  it 
was  licht  she  would  hae  seen  'im  as  sune  as  he  tiimed  the 
corner.  ^* 

"If  he  ever  comes  back,  the  sacket '^  (rascal),  T'nowhead  said 
to  Jess,   "we'll  show  'im  the  door  gey  quick." 

Jess  just  looked,  and  all  the  women  knew  how  she  would  take 
Jamie  to  her  arms. 

We  did  not  know  of  the  London  woman  then,  and  Jess  never 
knew  of  her.  Jamie's  mother  never  for  an  hour  allowed  that  he 
had  become  anything  but  the  loving  laddie  of  his  youth. 

"I  ken  'im  ower  weel,"  she  always  said,   "my  ain  Jamie.** 

Toward  the  end  she  was  sure  he  was  dead.  I  do  not  know 
when  she  first  made  up  her  mind  to  this,  nor  whether  it  was  not 
merely  a  phrase  for  those  who  wanted  to  discus's  him  with  her. 
I  know  that  she  still  sat  at  the  window  looking  at  the  elbow  of 
the   brae. 

The  minister  was  with  her  when  she  died.  She  was  in  her 
chair,  and  he  asked  her,  as  was  his  custom,  if  there  M'^as  any  par- 
ticular chapter  which  she  would  hke  him  to  read.  Since  her 
husband's  death  she  had  always  asked  for  the  fourteenth  of  John, 


JAMES   MATTHEW   BARRIE  lene 

*<  Hendry's  chapter,  **  as  it  is  still  called  among  a  very  few  old 
people  in  Thrums.  This  time  she  asked  him  to  read  the  six- 
teenth  chapter  of   Genesis. 

^'  When  I  came  to  the  thirteenth  verse,  '^  the  minister  told  me, 
"  *  And  she  called  the  name  of  the  Lord  that  spake  unto  her, 
Thou  God  seest  me,^  she  covered  her  face  with  her  two  hands, 
and  said,  '  Joey's  text,  Joey's  text.  Oh,  but  I  grudged  ye  sair, 
Joey.  >  » 

"  I  shut  the  book,  '*  the  minister  said,  "  when  I  came  to  the 
end  of  the  chapter,  and  then  I  saw  that  she  was  dead.  It  is  my 
belief  that  her  heart  broke  one-and-twenty  years  ago.'* 


AFTER    THE   SERMON 

From  ^The  Little  Minister  >:   by  permission  of  the  American,  Publishers' 

Corporation 

ONE  may  gossip  in  a  glen  on  Sabbaths,  though  not  in  a  town, 
without  losing  his  character,  and  I  used  to  await  the  return 
of  my  neighbor,  the  farmer  of  Waster  Lunny,  and  of 
Birse,  the  Glen  Quharity  post,  at  the  end  of  the  school-house 
path.  Waster  Lunny  was  a  man  whose  care  in  his  leisure  hours 
was  to  keep  from  his  wife  his  great  pride  in  her.  His  horse, 
Catlaw,  on  the  other  hand,  he  told  outright  what  he  thought  of 
it,  praising  it  to  its  face  and  blackguarding  it  as  it  deserved,  and 
I  have  seen  him,  when  completely  baffled  by  the  brute,  sit  down 
before  it  on  a  stone  and  thus  harangue :  —  ^*  You  think  you're 
clever,  Catlaw,  my  lass,  but  you're  mista'en.  You're  a  thrawn 
limmer,  that's  what  you  are.  You  think  you  have  blood  in  you. 
You  ha'e  blood!  Gae  awa,  and  dinna  blether.  I  tell  you  what, 
Catlaw,  I  met  a  man  yestreen  that  kent  your  mither,  and  he 
says  she  was  a  feikie,*  fushionless  besom.  What  do  you  say  to 
that  ? » 

As  for  the  post,  I  will  say  no  more  of  him  than  that  his 
bitter  topic  was  the  unreasonableness  of  humanity,  which  treated 
him  graciously  when  he  had  a  letter  for  it,  but  scowled  at  him 
when  he  had  none,  *^  aye  implying  that  I  ha'e  a  letter,  but  keep 
it  back.'* 

On  the  Sabbath  evening  after  the  riot,  I  stood  at  the  usual 
place  awaiting  my  friends,  and  saw  before  they  reached  me  that 

*  Feikie,  over-particular. 


2^96  JAMES   MATTHEW   BARRIE 

they  had  something-  untoward  to  tell.  The  farmer,  his  wife,  and 
three  children,  holding  each  other's  hands,  stretched  across  the 
road.  Birse  was  a  little  behind,  but  a  conversation  was  being 
kept  up  by  shouting.  All  were  walking  the  Sabbath  pace,  and 
the  family  having  started  half  a  minute  in  advance,  the  post  had 
not  yet  made  up  on  them. 

"  It's  sitting  to  snaw,  *^  Waster  Lunny  said,  drawing  near,  and 
just  as  I  was  to  reply,  *' It  is  so,**  Silva  slipped  in  the  words 
before  me. 

"You  wasna  at  the  kirk,**  was  Elspeth's  salutation.  I  had 
been  at  the  glen  church,  but  did  not  contradict  her,  for  it  is 
Established,  and  so  neither  here  nor  there.  I  was  anxious,  too, 
to  know  what  their  long  faces  meant,  and  therefore  asked  at 
once, —  "  Was  Mr.   Dishart  on  the  riot  ?  '* 

"  Forenoon,  ay ;  afternoon,  no,  **  replied  Waster  Lunny,  walking 
round  his  wife  to  get  nearer  me.  "  Dominie,  a  queery  thing 
happened  in  the  kirk  this  day,   sic  as — ** 

"Waster  Lunny,**  interrupted  Elspeth  sharply,  "have  you  on 
your  Sabbath  shoon  or  have  you  no  on  your  Sabbath  shoon  ?  ** 

"Guid  care  you  took  I  should  ha'e  the  dagont  oncanny  things 
on,**  retorted  the  farmer. 

"Keep  out  o'  the  gutter,  then,**  said  Elspeth,  "on  the  Lord's 
day.** 

"Him,**  said  her  man,  "that  is  forced  by  a  foolish  woman  to 
wear  genteel  'lastic-sided  boots  canna  forget  them  imtil  he  takes 
them  aff.  Whaur's  the  extra  reverence  in  wearing  shoon  twa 
sizes  ower  sma'  ?  ** 

"It  mayna  be  mair  reverent,**  suggested  Birse,  to  whom  Els- 
peth's kitchen  was  a  pleasant  place,  "but  it's  grand,  and  you 
canna  expect  to  be  baith  grand  and  comfortable.** 

I  reminded  them  that  they  were  speaking  of  Mr.   Dishart. 

"We  was  saying,**  began  the  post  briskly,   "that  —  ** 

"It  was  me  that  was  saying  it,**  said  Waster  Lunny.  "So, 
Dominie  —  ** 

"  Haud  your  gabs,  baith  o'  you,**  interrupted  Elspeth.  "You've 
been  roaring  the  story  to  one  another  till  you're  hoarse.** 

"In  the  forenoon,**  Waster  Lunny  went  on  determinedly,  "Mr. 
Dishart  preached  on  the  riot,  and  fine  he  was.  Oh,  dominie,  you 
should  hae  heard  him  ladling  it  on  to  Lang  Tammas,  no  by 
name,  but  in  sic  a  way  that  there  was  no  mistaking  wha  he  was 
preaching  at.     Sal!  oh,  losh!  Tammas  got  it  strong.** 


JAMES  MATTHEW  BARRIE  icgy 

"But  he's  dull  in  the  uptake,**  broke  in  the  post,  *by  what  I 
expected.  I  spoke  to  him  after  the  sermon,  and  I  says,  just  to 
see  if  he  was  properly  humbled :  —  '■  Ay,  Tammas,  *  I  says,  ^  them 
that  discourse  was  preached  against  winna  think  themselves  seven- 
feet  men  for  a  while  again.*  ^Ay,  Birse,*  he  answers,  ^and  glad 
I  am  to  hear  you  admit  it,  for  he  had  you  in  his  eye.*  I  was 
fair  scunnered  at  Tammas  the  day.  ** 

"  Mr.  Dishart  was  preaching  at  the  whole  clan-jamfray  o'  you,  '* 
said  Elspeth. 

"Maybe  he  was,**  said  her  husband,  leering;  "but  you  needna 
cast  it  at  us,  for  my  certie,  if  the  men  got  it  frae  him  in  the 
forenoon,  the  women  got  it  in  the  afternoon.** 

"  He  redd  them  up  most  michty,  **  said  the  post.  "  Thae  was 
his  very  words  or  something  like  them:  —  *Adam,*  says  he,  *was 
an  erring  man,  but  aside  Eve  he  was  respectable.*** 

"  Ay,  but  it  wasna  a'  women  he  meant,  **  Elspeth  explained, 
"for  when  he  said  that,  he  pointed  his  finger  direct  at  T'now- 
head's  lassie,  and  I  hope  it'll  do  her  good.** 

"But,  I  wonder,**  I  said,  "that  Mr.  Dishart  chose  such  a  sub- 
ject to-day.     I  thought  he  would  be  on  the  riot  at  both  services.** 

"You'll  wonder  mair, **  said  Elspeth,  "when  you  hear  what 
happened  afore  he  began  the  afternoon  sermon.  But  I  canna 
get  in  a  word  wi'  that  man  o'  mine.** 

"We've  been  speaking  about  it,**  said  Birse,  "ever  since  we 
left  the  kirk  door.  Tod,  we've  been  sawing  it  like  seed  a'  alang 
the  glen.** 

"And  we  meant  to  tell  you  about  it  at  once,**  said  Waster 
Lunny;  "but  there's  aye  so  muckle  to  say  about  a  minister. 
Dagont,  to  hae  ane  keeps  a  body  out  o'  languor.  Aye,  but  this 
breaks  the  drum.  Dominie,  either  Mr.  Dishart  wasna  weel  or  he 
was  in  the  devil's  grip.** 

This  startled  me,  for  the  farmer  was  looking  serious. 

"  He  was  weel  eneuch,  **  said  Birse,  "  for  a  heap  o'  fowk  spiered 
at  Jean  if  he  had  ta'en  his  porridge  as  usual,  and  she  admitted 
he  had.  But  the  lassie  was  skeered  hersel',  and  said  it  was  a 
mercy  Mrs.   Dishart  wasna  in  the  kirk.** 

"  Why  was  she  not  there  ?  **   I  asked  anxiously. 

"  Ou,  he  winna  let  her  out  in  sic  weather.  ** 

"  I  wish  you  would  tell  me  what  happened,  **  I  said  to  Elspeth. 

"  So  I  will,  **  she  answered,  "  if  Waster  Lunny  would  haud  his 
wheest  for  a  minute.     You  see  the  afternoon  diet  began  in  the 


1-^3  JAMES  MATTHEW  BARRIE 

ordinary  way,  and  a'  was  richt  imtil  we  came  to  the  sermon. 
*  You  will  find  my  text,  ^  he  says,  in  his  piercing  voice,  ^  in  the 
eighth  chapter  of  Ezra.  *  ** 

"  And  at  thae  words,  *^  said  Waster  Lunny,  ^*  my  heart  gae  a 
loup,  for  Ezra  is  an  unca  ill  book  to  find;  ay,  and  so  is  Ruth.* 

^*  I  kent  the  books  o'  the  Bible  by  heart,  *^  said  Elspeth,  scorn- 
fully,  **when  I  was  a  sax-year-auld.  ** 

"So  did  I,**  said  Waster  Lunny,  *^  and  I  ken  them  yet,  except 
when  I'm  hurried.  When  Mr.  Dishart  gave  out  Ezra  he  a  sort 
o'  keeked  round  the  kirk  to  find  out  if  he  had  puzzled  onybody, 
and  so  there  was  a  kind  o'  a  competition  among  the  congregation 
wha  would  lay  hand  on  it  first.  That  was  what  doited  me.  Ay, 
there  was  Ruth  when  she  wasna  wanted,  but  Ezra,  dagont,  it 
looked  as  if  Ezra  had  jumped  clean  out  o'  the  Bible.** 

*  You  wasna  the  only  distressed  crittur,  **  said  his  wife.  *' I 
was  ashamed  to  see  Eppie  McLaren  looking  up  the  order  o'  the 
books  at  the  beginning  o'  the  Bible." 

"Tibbie  Birse  was  even  mair  brazen,**  said  the  post,  "for  the 
sly  cuttie  opened  at  Kings  and  pretended  it  was  Ezra.** 

"None  o'  thae  things  would  I  do,**  said  Waster  Lunny,  "and 
sal,  I  dauredna,  for  Davit  Lunan  was  glowering  ower  my  shuther. 
Ay,  you  may  scowl  at  me,  Elspeth  Proctor,  but  as  far  back  as  I 
can  mind  Ezra  has  done  me.  Mony  a  time  afore  I  start  for  the 
kirk  I  take  my  Bible  to  a  quiet  place  and  look  Ezra  up.  In  the 
very  pew  I  says  canny  to  mysel',  *  Ezra,  Nehemiah,  Esther,  Job,* 
the  which  should  be  a  help,  but  the  moment  the  minister  gi'es 
out  that  awfu'  book,   away  goes  Ezra  like  the  Egyptian.** 

"And  you  after  her,**  said  Elspeth,  "like  the  weavers  that 
wouldna  fecht.     You  make  a  windmill  of  your  Bible.** 

"Oh,  I  winna  admit  I'm  beat.  Never  mind,  there's  queer 
things  in  the  world  forby  Ezra.  How  is  cripples  aye  so  puffed 
up  mair  than  other  folk  ?  How  does  flour-bread  aye  fall  on  the 
buttered  side  ?  ** 

"  I  will  mind,  **  Elspeth  said,  "  for  I  was  terrified  the  minister 
would  admonish  you  frae  the  pulpit.** 

"  He  couldna  hae  done  that,  for  was  he  no  baffled  to  find  Ezra 
himsel'?** 

"Him  no  find  Ezra!**  cried  Elspeth.  "I  hae  telled  you  a 
dozen  times  he  found  it  as  easy  as  you  could  yoke  a  horse.** 

"  The  thing  can  be  explained  in  no  other  way,  **  said  her  hus- 
band doggedly;  "if  he  was  weel  and  in  sound  mind.** 


JAMES  MATTHEW   BARRIE 


1599 


*^  Maybe  the  dominie  can  clear  it  up,*  suggested  the  post, 
^*him  being  a  scholar.'^ 

"  Then  tell  me  what  happened, "  I  asked. 

^'  Man,  hae  we  no  telled  you  ?  '^  Birse  said.  "  I  thocht  we 
had.» 

^*  It  was  a  terrible  scene,'*  said  Elspeth,  giving  her  husband  a 
shove.  *^  As  I  said,  Mr.  Dishart  gave  out  Ezra  eighth.  Weel, 
I  turned  it  up  in  a  jiffy,  and  syne  looked  cautiously  to  see  how 
Eppie  McLaren  was  getting  on.  Just  at  that  minute  I  heard  a 
groan  frae  the  pulpit.  It  didna  stop  short  o'  a  groan.  Ay,  you 
may  be  sure  I  looked  quick  at  the  minister,  and  there  I  saw  a 
sicht  that  would  hae  made  the  grandest  gape.  His  face  was  as 
white  as  a  baker's,  and  he  had  a  sort  of  fallen  against  the  back 
o'  the  pulpit    staring  demented-like  at  his  open  Bible.** 

^*And  I  saw  him,**  said  Birse,  ^*  put  up  his  hand  atween  him 
and  the  Book,  as  if  he  thocht  it  was  to  jump  at  him.** 

^' Twice,**  said  Elspeth,  "he  tried  to  speak,  and  twice  he  let 
the  words  fall.** 

"That,**  said  Waster  Lunny,  "the  whole  congregation  admits, 
but  I  didna  see  it  mysel',  for  a'  this  time  you  may  picture  me 
hunting  savage-like  for  Ezra,  I  thocht  the  minister  was  waiting 
till  I  found  it.** 

"Hendry  Munn,**  said  Birse,  "stood  upon  one  leg,  wondering 
whether  he  should  run  to  the  session-house  for  a  glass  of  water.** 

"But  by  that  time,**  said  Elspeth,  "the  fit  had  left  Mr.  Dish- 
art,  or  rather  it  had  ta'en  a  new  turn.  He  grew  red,  and  it's 
gospel  that  he  stamped  his  foot.** 

"He  had  the  face  of  one  using  bad  words,**  said  the  post, 
"He  didna  swear,  of  course,  but  that  was  the  face  he  had  on.** 

"  I  missed  it,  **  said  Waster  Lunny,  "  for  I  was  in  full  cry 
after  Ezra,  with  the  sweat  running  down  my  face.** 

"  But  the  most  astounding  thing  has  yet  to  be  telled,  **  went 
on  Elspeth.  "  The  minister  shook  himsel'  like  one  wakening  frae 
a  nasty  dream,  and  he  cries  in  a  voice  of  thunder,  just  as  if  he 
was  shaking  his  fist  at  somebody — ** 

"He  cries,**  Birse  interposed,  cleverly,  "he  cries,  *You  will 
find  the  text  in  Genesis,  chapter  three,  verse  six.*** 

"  Yes,  **  said  Elspeth,  "  first  he  gave  out  one  text,  and  then  he 
gave  out  another,  being  the  most  amazing  thing  to  my  mind  that 
ever  happened  in  the  town  of  Thrums.  What  will  our  children's 
children  think  o't  ?     I  wouldna  ha'e  missed  it  for  a  pound  note,  ** 


^6oo  JAMES  MATTHEW  BARRIE 

^*  Nor  me,  ^^  said  Waster  Liinny,  **  though  I  only  got  the  tail 
o't.  Dominie,  no  sooner  had  he  said  Genesis  third  and  sixth, 
than  I  laid  my  finger  on  Ezra.  Was  it  no  provoking  ?  Onybody 
can  turn  up  Genesis,  but  it  needs  an  able-bodied  man  to  find 
Ezra.  '> 

**  He  preached  on  the  Fall,^'  Elspeth  said,  "for  an  hour  and 
twenty-five  minutes,  but  powerful  though  he  was  I  would  rather 
he  had  telled  us  what  made  him  gie  the  go-by  to  Ezra.** 

"  All  I  can  say, "  said  Waster  Lunny,  "  is  that  I  never  heard 
him  mair  awe-inspiring.  Whaur  has  he  got  sic  a  knowledge  of 
women  ?  He  riddled  them,  he  fair  riddled  them,  till  I  was 
ashamed  o'  being  married.** 

"It's  easy  kent  whaur  he  got  his  knowledge  of  women,**  Birse 
explained,  "  it's  a'  in  the  original  Hebrew.  You  can  howk  ony 
mortal  thing  out  o'  the  original  Hebrew,  the  which  all  ministers 
hae  at  their  finger  ends.  What  else  makes  them  ken  to  jump  a 
verse  now  and  then  when  giving  out  a  psalm  ?  ** 

"It  wasna  women  like  me  he  denounced,**  Elspeth  insisted, 
"  but  young  lassies  that  leads  men  astray  wi'  their  abominable 
wheedling  ways.** 

"  Tod,  **  said  her  husband,  "  if  they  try  their  hands  on  Mr. 
Dishart  they'll  meet  their  match.** 

"They  will,**  chuckled  the  post.  "The  Hebrew's  a  grand 
thing,  though  teuch,    I'm  telled,   michty  teuch.** 

"His  sublimest  burst,**  Waster  Lunny  came  back  to  tell  me, 
"  was  about  the  beauty  o'  the  soul  being  everything  and  the 
beauty  o'  the  face  no  worth  a  snuff.  What  a  scorn  he  has  for 
bonny  faces  and  toom  souls!  I  dinna  deny  but  what  a  bonny 
face  fell  takes  me,  but  Mr.  Dishart  wouldna  gi'e  a  blade  o'  grass 
for't.  Ay,  and  I  used  to  think  that  in  their  foolishness  about 
women  there  was  dagont  little  differ  atween  the  unlearned  and 
the  highly  edicated,  ** 

THE   MUTUAL   DISCOVERY 

From  <The  Little  Minister  >:    by  permission  of  the  American  Publishers' 

Corporation 

AvoiTNG  man  thinks  that  he  alone  of  mortals  is  impervious  to 
love,   and  so  the   discovery  that  he  is   in   it  suddenly  alters 
his   views  of  his  own  mechanism.     It   is  thus  not  unlike  a 
rap  on  the  funny-bone.     Did  Gavin  make  this  discovery  when  the 


JAMES   MATTHEW   BARRIE  160 1 

Eg-yptian  left  him  ?  Apparently  he  only  came  to  the  brink  of  it 
and  stood  blind.  He  had  driven  her  from  him  for  ever,  and  his 
sense  of  loss  was  so  acute  that  his  soul  cried  out  for  the  cure 
rather  than  for  the  name  of  the  malady. 

In  time  he  would  have  realized  what  had  happened,  but  time 
was  denied  him,  for  just  as  he  was  starting  for  the  mudhouse 
Babbie  saved  his  dignity  by  returning  to  him.  .  .  .  She 
looked  up  surprised,  or  seemingly  surprised,  to  find  him  still 
there. 

"I  thought  you  had  gone  away  long  ago,^*  she  said  stiffly. 

"Otherwise,**  asked  Gavin  the  dejected,  "you  would  not  have 
came  back  to  the  well  ?  ** 

"  Certainly  not. " 

"  I  am  very  sorry.  Had  you  waited  another  moment  I  should 
have  been  gone.** 

This  was  said  in  apology,  but  the  willful  Egyptian  chose  to 
change  its  meaning. 

"You  have  no  right  to  blame  me  for  disturbing  you,**  she 
declared  with  warmth. 

"I  did  not.      I  only—** 

"  You  could  have  been  a  mile  away  by  this  time.  Nanny 
wanted  more  water.** 

Babbie  scrutinized  the  minister  sharply  as  she  made  this  state- 
ment. Surely  her  conscience  troubled  her,  for  on  his  not  answer- 
ing immediately  she  said,  "  Do  you  presume  to  disbelieve  me  ? 
What  could  have  made  me  return  except  to  fill  the  pans  again?** 

"  Nothing,  **  Gavin  admitted  eagerly,  "  and  I  assure  you  — ** 

Babbie  should  have  been  grateful  to  his  denseness,  but  it 
merely  set  her  mind  at  rest. 

"Say  anything  against  me  you  choose,**  she  told  him.  "Say 
it  as  brutally  as  you  like,   for  I  won't  listen.** 

She  stopped  to  hear  his  response  to  that,  and  she  looked  so 
cold  that  it  almost  froze  on  Gavin's  lips. 

"  I  had  no  right,  **  he  said  dolefully,  "  to  speak  to  you  as  I  did.  ** 

"You  had  not,**  answered  the  proud  Egyptian.  She  was  look- 
ing away  from  him  to  show  that  his  repentance  was  not  even 
interesting  to  her.  However,  she  had  forgotten  already  not  to 
listen. 

She    was    very    near    him,   and    the    tears    had    not    yet    dried 
on  her  eyes.     They  were   laughing  eyes,  eyes  in  distress,   implor- 
ing eyes.       Her   pale  face,  smiling,  sad,  dimpled   yet   entreating 
m — loi 


l6o2  JAMES  MATTHEW   BARRIE 

forgiveness,  was  the  one  prominent  thing-  in  the  world  to  him 
just  then.  He  wanted  to  kiss  her.  He  would  do  it  as  soon  as 
her  eyes  rested  on  his,  but  she  continued  without  regarding  him. 

"How  mean  that  sounds!  Oh,  if  I  were  a  man  I  would  wish 
to  be  everything  that  I  am  not,  and  nothing  that  I  am.  I  would 
scorn  to  be  a  liar,  I  would  choose  to  be  open  in  all  things,  I 
would  try  to  fight  the  world  honestly.  But  I  am  only  a  woman, 
and  so  —  well,  that  is  the  kind  of  man  I  would  hkc  to  marry." 

«A  minister  may  be  all  these  things,'*  said  Gavin  breathlessly. 

<<The  man  I  could  love,"  Babbie  went  on,  not  heeding  him, 
almost  forgetting  that  he  was  there,  "  must  not  spend  his  days  in 
idleness  as  the  men  I  know  do. " 

«I  do  not.» 

'^  He  must  be  brave,  no  mere  worker  among  others,  but  a 
leader  of  men." 

"All  ministers  are." 

"Who  makes  his  influence  felt." 

"  Assuredly. " 

"And  takes  the  side  of  the  weak  against  the  strong,  even 
though  the  strong  be  in  the  right." 

"  Always  my  tendency. " 

"  A  man  who  has  a  mind  of  his  own,  and  having  once  made 
it  up  stands  to  it  in  defiance  even  of — " 

"Of  his  session." 

"Of  the  world.     He  must  understand  me.*' 

"I  do." 

"And  be  my  master." 

"  It  is  his  lawful  position  in  the  house. " 

"  He  must  not  yield  to  my  coaxing  or  tempers. " 

"  It  would  be  weakness. " 

"  But  compel  me  to  do  his  bidding ;  yes,  even  thrash  me 
if—" 

"If  you  won't  listen  to  reason.  Babbie,"  cried  Gavin,  "I  am 
that  man !  " 

Here  the  inventory  abruptly  ended,  and  these  two  people 
found  themselves  staring  at  each  other,  as  if  of  a  sudden  they 
had  heard  something  dreadful.  I  do  not  know  how  long  they 
stood  thus  motionless  and  horrified.  I  cannot  tell  even  which 
stirred  first.  All  I  know  is  that  almost  simultaneously  they 
turned  from  each  other  and  hurried  out  of  the  wood  in  opposite 
directions. 


JAMES   MATTHEW  BARRIE  7.603 

LOST   ILLUSIONS 
From  <  Sentimental  Tommy  > 

TO-MORROW  came,  and  with  it  two  eager  little  figures  rose  and 
gulped  their  porridge,  and  set  off  to  see  Thrums.  They 
were  dressed  in  the  black  clothes  Aaron  Latta  had  bought 
for  them  in  London,  and  they  had  agreed  just  to  walk,  but  when 
they  reached  the  door  and  saw  the  tree-tops  of  the  Den  they  — 
they  ran.  Would  you  not  like  to  hold  them  back  ?  It  is  a  child's 
tragedy. 

They  went  first  into  the  Den,  and  the  rocks  were  dripping 
wet,  all  the  trees  save  the  firs  were  bare,  and  the  mud  round  a 
tiny  spring  pulled  off  one  of  Elspeth's  boots. 

**  Ton:imy,  ^^  she  cried,  quaking,  "  that  narsty  puddle  can't  not 
be  the  Cuttle  Well,  can  it  ?  >> 

<*  No,  it  ain't,  ^^  said  Tommy,   quickly,   but  he  feared  it  was. 

^*  It's  c-c-colder  here  than  London,  ^^  Elspeth  said,  shivering, 
and  Tomiuy  was  shivering  too,  but  he  answered,  ^^  I'm  —  I'm  — 
I'm  warm.** 

The  Den  was  strangely  small,  and  soon  they  were  on  a 
shabby  brae,  where  women  in  short  gowns  came  to  their  doors 
and  men  in  night-caps  sat  down  on  the  shafts  of  their  barrows  to 
look  at  Jean  Myles's  bairns. 

"  What  does  yer  think  ?  **  Elspeth   whispered,  veiy  doubtfully. 

^^  They're  beauties,**  Tommy  answered,   determinedly. 

Presently  Elspeth  cried,  ^^  Oh,  Tommy,  what  a  ugly  stair! 
Where  is  the  beauty  stairs  as  it  wore  outside  for  show  ?  *^ 

This  was  one  of  them,  and  Tommy  knew  it.  ^*  Wait  till  you 
see  the  west  town  end,  **  he  said,  bravely :  *^  it's  grand.  **  But 
when  they  were  in  the  west  town  end,  and  he  had  to  admit  it, 
"Wait  till  you  see  the  square,**  he  said,  and  when  they  were  in 
the  square,  "  Wait,  **  he  said,  huskily,  "  till  you  see  the  town- 
house.**  Alas,  this  was  the  town-house  facing  them,  and  when 
they  knew  it,  he  said,  hurriedly,  "  Wait  till  you  see  the  Auld 
Licht  kirk.** 

They  stood  long  in  front  of  the  Auld  Licht  kirk,  which  ha 
had  sworn  was  bigger  and  lovelier  than  St.  Paul's,  but  —  well,  it 
is  a  different  style  of  architecture,  and  had  Elspeth  not  been 
there  with  tears  in  waiting.  Tommy  would  have  blubbered.  "  It's 
■ — it's  littler  than  I  thought,**  he  said,  desperately,  "but  —  the 
minister,  oh,  what  a  wonderful  big  man  he  is !  ** 


j6o4  JAMES   MATTHEW    BARRIE 

"  Are  you  sure  ?  ^^  Elspeth  squeaked. 

"  I  swear  he  is.  ** 

The  church  door  opened  and  a  gentleman  came  out,  a  little 
man,  boyish  in  the  back,  with  the  eager  face  of  those  who  live 
too  quickly.  But  it  was  not  at  him  that  Tommy  pointed  reas- 
suringly; it  was  at  the  monster  church  key,  half  of  which  pro- 
truded from  his  tail  pocket  and  waggled  as  he  moved,  like  the 
hilt  of  a  sword. 

Speaking  like  an  old  residenter,  Tommy  explained  that  he  had 
brought  his  sister  to  see  the  church.  "She's  ta'en  aback,'*  he 
said,  picking  out  Scotch  words  carefully,  "because  it's  littler  than 
the  London  kirks,  but  I  telled  her — I  telled  her  that  the  preach- 
ing is  better.** 

This  seemed  to  please  the  stranger,  for  he  patted  Tommy  on 
the  head  while  inquiring,  "  How  do  you  know  that  the  preaching 
is  better  ?  ** 

"Tell  him,   Elspeth,**  replied  Tommy,   modestly. 

"There  ain't  nuthin'  as  Tommy  don't  know,**  Elspeth  ex- 
plained.     "  He  knows  what  the  minister  is  like,   too.  ** 

"He's  a  noble  sight,**  said  Tommy. 

"He  can  get  anything  from  God  he  likes,**  said  Elspeth. 

"He's  a  terrible  big  man,**  said  Tommy. 

This  seemed  to  please  the  little  gentleman  less.  "  Big !  **  he 
exclaimed,   irritably ;  "  w^hy  should  he  be  big  ?  ** 

"  He  is  big,  **  Elspeth  almost  screamed,  for  the  minister  was 
her  last  hope. 

"Nonsense!**  said  the  little  gentleman.  "He  is  —  well,  I  am 
the  minister.** 

"  You !  **    roared  Tommy,   wrathfully. 

"Oh,  oh,  oh!**  sobbed  Elspeth. 

For  a  moment  the  Rev.  Mr.  Dishart  looked  as  if  he  would 
like  to  knock  two  little  heads  together,  but  he  walked  away 
without  doing  it. 

"Never  mind,**  w^hispered  Tommy  hoarsely  to  Elspeth. 
"Never  mind,   Elspeth,  you  have  me  yet.** 

This  consolation  seldom  failed  to  gladden  her,  but  her  disap- 
pointment was  so  sharp  to-day  that  she  would  not  even  look  up. 

"  Come  away  to  the  cemetery,  it's  grand,  **  he  said ;  but  still 
she  would  not  be  comforted. 

"And  I'll  let  you  hold  my  hand  —  as  soon  as  we're  past  the 
houses,**  he  added. 


JAMES  MATTHEW   BARRIE  1605 

^*ril  let  you  hold  it  now,'*  he  said,  eventually;  but  even  then 
Elspeth  cried  dismally,  and  her  sobs  were  hurting  him  more  than 
her. 

He  knew  all  the  ways  of  getting-  round  Elspeth,  and  when 
next  he  spoke  it  was  with  a  sorrowful  dignity.  ^*  I  didna  think,  '* 
he  said,  ^*as  yer  wanted  me  never  to  be  able  to  speak  again;  no, 
I  didna  think  it,   Elspeth.** 

She  took  her  hands  from  her  face  and  looked  at  him  inquir- 
ingly. 

*^  One  of  the  stories  mamma  telled  me  and  Reddy,  **  he  said, 
"  were  a  man  what  saw  such  a  beauty  thing  that  he  was  struck 
dumb  with  admiration.  Struck  dumb  is  never  to  be  able  to 
speak  again,  and  I  wish  I  had  been  struck  dumb  when  you 
wanted  it.** 

«But  I  didn't  want  it!**   Elspeth  cried. 

^*If  Thrums  had  been  one  little  bit  beautier  than  it  is,**  he 
went  on,  solemnly,  "it  would  have  struck  me  dumb.  It  would 
have  hurt  me  sore,  but  what  about  that,   if  it  pleased  you !  ** 

Then  did  Elspeth  see  what  a  wicked  girl  she  had  been,  and 
when  next  the  two  were  seen  by  the  curious  (it  was  on  the 
cemetery  road),  they  were  once  more  looking  cheerful.  At  the 
smallest  provocation  they  exchanged  notes  of  admiration,  siich 
as,  "  O  Tommy,  what  a  bonny  barrel !  **  or  "  O  Elspeth,  I  tell 
yer  that's  a  dike,  and  there's  just  walls  in  London;**  but  some- 
times Elspeth  would  stoop  hastily,  pretending  that  she  wanted 
to  tie  her  boot-lace,  but  really  to  brush  away  a  tear,  and  there 
were  moments  when  Tommy  hung  very  limp.  Each  was  trying 
to  deceive  the  other  for  the  other's  sake,  and  one  of  them  was 
never  good  at  deception.  They  saw  through  each  other,  yet  kept 
up  the  chilly  game,  because  they  could  think  of  nothing  better; 
and  perhaps  the  game  was  worth  playing,  for  love  invented  it. 
Scribner's  Magazine.     Copyrighted  by  Charles  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 


l6o6  JAMES  MATTHEW  BARRIE 


SINS   OF  CIRCUMSTANCE 

From  <  Sentimental  Tommy  > 


WITH  the  darkness,  too,  crept  into  the  Miickley  certain  devils 
in  the  color  of  the  night  who  spoke  thickly  and  rolled 
braw  lads  in  the  mire,  and  egged  on  friends  to  fight,  and 
cast  lewd  thoughts  into  the  minds  of  the  women.  At  first  the 
men  had  been  bashful  swains.  To  the  women's  ^^  Gie  me  my 
faring,  Jock,*'  they  had  replied,  "Wait,  Jean,  till  I'm  fee'd,**  but 
by  night  most  had  got  their  arlcs,  with  a  dram  above  it,  and  he 
who  could  only  guffaw  at  Jean  a  few  hours  ago  had  her  round 
the  waist  now,  and  still  an  arm  free  for  rough  play  with  other 
kimmers.  The  Jeans  were  as  boisterous  as  the  Jocks,  giving 
them  leer  for  leer,  running  from  them  with  a  giggle,  w^aiting  to 
be  caught  and  rudely  kissed.  Grand,  patient,  long-suffering  fel- 
lows these  men  were,  up  at  five,  summer  and  winter,  foddering 
their  horses,  maybe,  hours  before  there  would  be  food  for  them- 
selves, miserably  paid,  housed  like  cattle,  and  when  the  rheuma- 
tism seized  them,  liable  to  be  flung  aside  like  a  broken  graip. 
As  hard  was  the  life  of  the  women:  coarse  food,  chaff  beds, 
damp  clothes  their  portion;  their  sweethearts  in  the  service  of 
masters  who  were  loth  to  fee  a  married  man.  Is  it  to  be  won- 
dered that  these  lads  who  could  be  faithful  unto  death  drank 
soddenly  on  their  one  free  day;  that  these  girls,  starved  of  oppor- 
tunities for  womanliness,  of  which  they  could  make  as  much  as 
the  finest  lady,  sometimes  woke  after  a  Muckley  to  wish  that  they 
might  wake  no  more  ? 
Scribner's  Magazine.     Copyrighted  by  Charies  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York, 


i6o7 


FREDERIC   BASTIAT 

(1801-1850) 

[oLiTiCAL  Economy  has  been  called  the  "dismal  science  >';  and 
probably  the  majority  think  of  it  as  either  merely  a  mat- 
ter of  words  and  phrases,  or  as  something  too  abstruse  for 
the  common  mind  to  comprehend.  It  was  the  distinction  of  Bastiat 
that  he  was  able  to  write  economic  tracts  in  such  a  language  that  he 
that  ran  might  read,  and  to  clothe  the  apparently  dry  bones  with 
such  integuments  as  manifested  vitality.  Under  his  pen,  questions  of 
finance,  of  tax,  of  exchange,  became  questions  which  concern  the 
lives  of  individual  men  and  women,  with 
sentiments,  hopes,   and  aspirations. 

He  was  born  at  Bayonne  in  France, 
June  19th,  1 80 1.  At  nine  years  of  age  he 
was  left  an  orphan,  but  he  was  cared  for 
by  his  grandfather  and  aunt.  He  received 
his  schooling  at  the  college  of  St.  Sever 
and  at  Soreze,  where  he  was  noted  as  a 
diligent  student.  When  about  twenty  years 
of  age  he  was  taken  into  the  commercial 
house  of  his  uncle  at  Bayonne.  His  leis- 
ure was  employed  in  cultivating  art  and 
literature,  and  he  became  accomplished  in 
languages  and  in  instrumental  and  vocal 
music.  He  was  early  interested  in  politi- 
cal and  social  economy  through  the  writings  of  Adam  Smith,  J.  B. 
Say,  Comte,  and  others;  and  having  inherited  considerable  landed 
property  at  Mugron  on  the  death  of  his  grandfather  in  1827,  he  under- 
took the  personal  charge  of  it,  at  the  same  time  continuing  his 
economic  studies.  His  experiment  in  farming  did  not  prove  success- 
ful; but  he  rapidly  developed  clear  ideas  upon  economical  problems, 
being  much  assisted  in  their  consideration  by  frequent  conferences 
with  his  neighbor,  M.  Felix  Coudroy.  These  two  worked  much 
together,  and  cherished  a  close  sympathy  in  thought  and  heart. 

The  bourgeois  revolution  of  1830  was  welcomed  enthusiastically 
by  Bastiat.  It  was  a  revolution  of  prosperous  and  well-instructed 
men,  willing  to  make  sacrifices  to  attain  an  orderly  and  systematic 
method  of  government.  To  him  the  form  of  the  administration  did 
not   greatly   matter:    the    right   to   vote    taxes    was   the   right    which 


Frederic  Bastiat 


l6o8  FRfeDERIC   BASTIAT 

governed  the  governors.  "  There  is  always  a  tendency  on  the  part 
of  governments  to  extend  their  powers.'*  he  said;  "the  administration 
therefore  must  be  tinder  constant  surveillance.**  His  motto  was  "  Foi 
systematique  a  la  libre  activite  de  I'individu;  defiance  systematique 
vis-a-vis  de  I'Etat  congu  abstraitement, — c'est-a-dire,  defiance  par- 
faitement  pure  de  toute  hostilite  de  parti.**  [Systematic  faith  in  the 
free  activity  of  the  individual ;  systematic  distrust  of  the  -State  con- 
ceived abstractly, — that  is,  a  distrust  entirely  free  from  prejudice.] 

His  work  with  his  pen  seems  to  have  been  begun  about  1830.  and 
from  the  first  was  concerned  with  matters  of  economy  and  govern- 
ment. A  year  later  he  was  chosen  to  local  office,  and  every  oppor- 
tunity which  offered  was  seized  upon  to  bring  before  the  common 
people  the  true  milk  of  the  economic  word,  as  he  conceived  it.  The 
germ  of  his  theory  of  values  appeared  in  a  pamphlet  of  1834,  and 
the  line  of  his  development  was  a  steady  one;  his  leading  princi- 
ples being  the  importance  of  restricting  the  functions  of  government 
to  the  maintenance  of  order,  and  of  removing  all  shackles  from  the 
freedom  of  production  and  exchange.  Through  subscription  to  an 
English  periodical  he  became  familiar  with  Cobden  and  the  Anti- 
Corn-Law  League,  and  his  subsequent  intimacy  with  Cobden  contrib- 
uted much  to  broaden  his  horizon.  In  1844-5  appeared  his  brilliant 
*  Sophismes  economiques,*  which  in  their  kind  have  never  been 
equaled;  and  his  reputation  rapidly  expanded.  He  enthusiastically 
espoused  the  cause  of  Free  Trade,  and  issued  a  work  entitled  <  Cob- 
den et  la  Ligue,  ou  I'Agitation  anglaise  pour  la  liberte  des  echanges* 
(Cobden  and  the  League,  or  the  English  Agitation  for  Liberty  of 
Exchange),  which  attracted  great  attention,  and  won  for  its  author 
the  title  of  corresponding  member  of  the  Institute.  A  movement  for 
organization  in  favor  of  tariff  reform  was  begun,  of  which  he  natur- 
ally became  a  leader;  and  feeling  that  Paris  was  the  centre  from 
which  influence  should  flow,  to  Paris  he  removed.  M.  de  Molinari 
gives  an  account  of  his  debut:  —  <<  We  still  seem  to  see  him  making 
his  first  round  among  the  journals  which  had  shown  themselves 
favorable  to  cause  of  the  freedom  of  commerce.  He  had  not  yet 
had  time  to  call  upon  a  Parisian  tailor  or  hatter,  and  in  truth  it 
had  not  occurred  to  him  to  do  so.  With  his  long  hair  and  his  small 
hat,  his  large  surtout  and  his  family  umbrella,  he  would  naturally 
be  taken  for  a  reputable  countryman  looking  at  the  sights  of  the 
metropolis.  But  his  countryman's-face  was  at  the  same  time  roguish 
and  spirituelle,  his  large  black  eyes  were  bright  and  luminous,  and 
his  forehead,  of  medium  breadth  but  squarely  formed,  bore  the 
imprint  of  thought.  At  a  glance  one  could  see  that  he  was  a  peas- 
ant of  the  country  of  Montaigne,  and  in  listening  to  him  one  realized 
that  here  was  a  disciple  of  Franklin.** 


FRfiDfiRIC   BASTIAT 


1609 


He  plunged  at  once  into  work,  and  his  activity  was  prodigious. 
He  contributed  to  numerous  journals,  maintained  an  active  corre- 
spondence with  Cobden,  kept  up  communications  with  organizations 
throughout  the  country,  and  was  always  ready  to  meet  his  oppo- 
nents in  debate. 

The  Republic  of  1848  was  accepted  in  good  faith;  but  he  was 
strongly  impressed  by  the  extravagant  schemes  which  accompanied 
the  Republican  movement,  as  well  as  by  the  thirst  for  peace  which 
animated  multitudes.  The  Provisional  government  had  made  solemn 
promises:  it  must  pile  on  taxes  to  enable  it  to  keep  its  promises. 
<*  Poor  people !  How  they  have  deceived  themselves !  It  would  have 
been  so  easy  and  so  just  to  have  eased  matters  by  reducing  the 
taxes;  instead,  this  is  to  be  done  by  profusion  of  expenditure,  and 
people  do  not  see  that  all  this  machinery  amounts  to  taking  away 
ten  in  order  to  return  eight,  without  counting  the  fact  that  liberty  will 
succumb  under  the  operation?'^  He  tried  to  stem  the  tide  of  extrava- 
gance; he  published  a  journal,  the  Republique  Frangaise,  for  the  ex- 
press purpose  of  promulgating  his  views;  he  entered  the  Constituent 
and  then  the  Legislative  Assembly,  as  a  member  for  the  department 
of  Landes,  and  spoke  eloquently  from  the  tribune.  He  was  a  con- 
stitutional <^  Mugwump  >> :  he  cared  for  neither  parties  nor  men,  but 
for  ideas.  He  was  equally  opposed  to  the  domination  of  arbitrary 
power  and  to  the  tyranny  of  Socialism.  He  voted  with  the  right 
against  the  left  on  extravagant  Utopian  schemes,  and  with  the  left 
against  the  right  when  he  felt  that  the  legitimate  complaints  of  the 
poor  and  suffering  were  unheeded. 

In  the  midst  of  his  activity  he  was  overcome  by  a  trouble  in  the  ' 
throat,  which  induced  his  physicians  to  send  him  to  Italy.  The 
effort  for  relief  was  a  vain  one,  however,  and  he  died  in  Rome 
December  24th,  1850.  His  complete  works,  mostly  composed  of 
occasional  essays,  were  printed  in  1855.  Besides  those  mentioned,  the 
most  important  are  ^Propriete  et  Loi^  (Property  and  Law),  <  Justice 
et  Fraternite,^  <  Protectionisme  et  Communisme,  >  and  <  Harmonies 
economiques.*  The  <  Harmonies  economiques  >  and  ^Sophismes  econo- 
miques^  have  been  translated  and  published  in  English. 


j5io  FREDERIC   BASTIAT 


PETITION 

Of  the  Manufacturers  of  Candles,  Wax-Lights,  Lamps,  Candle- 
sticks, Street  Lamps,  Snuffers,  Extinguishers,  and  of  the 
Producers  of  Oil,  Tallow,  Rosin,  Alcohol,  and  Generally 
OF  Everything  Connected  with  Lighting. 

To  Messieurs  the  Members  of  the  Chamber  of  Deputies : 

Gentlemen :  —  You  are  on  the  right  road.  You  reject  abstract 
theories,  and  have  little  consideration  for  cheapness  and  plenty. 
Your  chief  care  is  the  interest  of  the  producer.  You  desire  to 
emancipate  him  from  external  competition,  and  reserve  the 
national  market  for  national  industry. 

We  are  about  to  offer  you  an  admirable  opportunity  of  apply- 
ing your  —  what  shall  we  call  it?  your  theory?  no:  nothing  is 
more  deceptive  than  theory.  Your  doctrine  ?  your  system  ?  your 
principle  ?  but  you  dislike  doctrines,  you  abhor  systems,  and  as  for 
principles,  you  deny  that  there  are  any  in  social  economy.  We 
shall  say,  then,  your  practice,  your  practice  without  theory  and 
without  principle. 

We  are  suffering  from  the  intolerable  competition  of  a  foreign 
rival,  placed,  it  would  seem,  in  a  condition  so  far  superior  to 
ours  for  the  production  of  light,  that  he  absolutely  inundates  our 
national  market  with  it  at  a  price  fabulously  reduced.  The 
moment  he  shows  himself,  our  trade  leaves  us  —  all  consumers 
apply  to  him;  and  a  branch  of  native  industry,  having  countless 
ramifications,  is  all  at  once  rendered  completely  stagnant.  This 
rival,  who  is  no  other  than  the  Sim,  wages  war  to  the  knife 
against  us,  and  we  suspect  that  he  has  been  raised  up  by  perfid- 
ious Albion  (good  policy  as  times  go);  inasmuch  as  he  displays 
towards  that  haughty  island  a  circumspection  with  which  he  dis- 
penses in  our  case. 

What  we  pray  for  is,  that  it  may  please  you  to  pass  a  law 
ordering  the  shutting  up  of  all  windows,  skylights,  dormer  win- 
dows, outside  and  inside  shutters,  curtains,  blinds,  bull's-eyes;  in 
a  word,  of  all  openings,  holes,  chinks,  clefts,  and  fissures,  by  or 
through  which  the  light  of  the  sun  has  been  in  use  to  enter 
houses,  to  the  prejudice  of  the  meritorious  manufactures  with 
which  we  flatter  ourselves  we  have  accommodated  our  country, — 
a  country  which,  in  gratitude,  ought  not  to  abandon  us  now  to  a 
strife  so  unequal. 


FRfiDfiRIC   BASTIAT  1611 

We  trust,  gentlemen,  that  you  will  not  regard  this  our  re- 
quest as  a  satire,  or  refuse  it  without  at  least  previously  hearing 
the  reasons  which  w^e  have  to  urge  in  its  support. 

And  first,  if  you  shut  up  as  much  as  possible  all  access  to 
natural  light,  and  create  a  demand  for  artificial  light,  which  of 
our  French  manufactures  will  not  be  encouraged  by  it  ? 

If  more  tallow  is  consumed,  then  there  must  be  more  oxen 
and  sheep;  and  consequently,  we  shall  behold  the  multiplication 
of  artificial  mead6ws,  meat,  wool,  hides,  and  above  all  manure, 
which  is  the  basis  and  foundation  of  all  agricultural  wealth. 

If  more  oil  is  consumed,  then  we  shall  have  an  extended 
cultivation  of  the  poppy,  of  the  olive,  and  of  rape.  These  rich 
and  exhausting  plants  will  come  at  the  right  time  to  enable  us 
to  avail  ourselves  of  the  increased  fertility  which  the  rearing  of 
additional  cattle  will  impart  to  our  lands. 

Our  heaths  will  be  covered  with  resinous  trees.  Numerous 
swarms  of  bees  will,  on  the  mountains,  gather  perfumed  treas- 
ures, now  wasting  their  fragrance  on  the  desert  air,  like  the 
flowers  from  which  they  emanate.  No  branch  of  agriculture  but 
will  then  exhibit  a  cheering  development. 

The  same  remark  applies  to  navigation.  Thousands  of  vessels 
will  proceed  to  the  whale  fishery;  and  in  a  short  time  we  shall 
possess  a  navy  capable  of  maintaining  the  honor  of  France,  and 
gratifying  the  patriotic  aspirations  of  your  petitioners,  the  under- 
signed candle-makers  and  others. 

But  what  shall  we  say  of  the  manufacture  of  articles  de 
Paris?  Henceforth  you  will  behold  gildings,  bronzes,  crystals, 
in  candlesticks,  in  lamps,  in  lustres,  in  candelabra,  shining  forth 
in  spacious  warerooms,  compared  with  which  those  of  the  pres- 
ent day  can  be  regarded  but  as  mere  shops. 

No  poor  re'sinier  from  his  heights  on  the  sea-coast,  no  coal- 
miner  from  the  depth  of  his  sable  gallery,  but  will  rejoice  in 
higher  wages  and  increased  prosperity. 

Only  have  the  goodness  to  reflect,  gentlemen,  and  you  will 
be  convinced  that  there  is  perhaps  no  Frenchman,  from  the 
wealthy  coal-master  to  the  humblest  vender  of  lucifer  matches, 
whose  lot  will  not  be  ameliorated  by  the  success  of  this  our 
petition. 

We  foresee  your  objections,  gentlemen,  but  we  know  that  you 
can  oppose  to  us  none  but  such  as  you  have  picked  up  from  the 
effete   works   of  the   partisans  of   Free    Trade.     We   defy  you  to 


i6i2  FREDERIC   BASTIAT 

Utter  a  single  word  against  us  which  will  not  instantly  rebound 
against  yourselves  and  your  entire  policy. 

You  will  tell  us  that  if  we  gain  by  the  protection  which  we 
seek,  the  country  will  lose  by  it,  because  the  consumer  must 
bear  the  loss. 

We  answer:  — 

You  have  ceased  to  have  any  right  to  invoke  the  interest  of 
the  consumer;  for  whenever  his  interest  is  found  opposed  to  that 
of  the  producer,  you  sacrifice  the  former.  You*  have  done  so  for 
the  purpose  of  encouraging  labor  and  increasing  employment.  For 
the  same  reason  you  should  do  so  again. 

You  have  yourself  refuted  this  objection.  When  you  are  told 
that  the  consumer  is  interested  in  the  free  importation  of  iron, 
coal,  com,  textile  fabrics  —  yes,  you  reply,  but  the  producer  is 
interested  in  their  exclusion.  Well,  be  it  so;  —  if  consumers  are 
interested  in  the  free  admission  of  natural  light,  the  producers 
of  artificial  light  are  equally  interested  in  its  prohibition. 

But  again,  you  may  say  that  the  producer  and  consumer  are 
identical.  If  the  manufacturer  gain  by  protection,  he  will  make 
the  agriculturist  also  a  gainer;  and  if  agriculture  prosper,  it  will 
open  a  vent  to  manufactures.  Very  well:  if  you  confer  upon  us 
the  monopoly  of  furnishing  light  during  the  day, — first  of  all, 
we  shall  purchase  quantities  of  tallow,  coals,  oils,  resinous  sub- 
stances, wax,  alcohol  —  besides  silver,  iron,  bronze,  crystal  —  to 
carry  on  our  manufactures;  and  then  we,  and  those  who  furnish 
us  with  such  commodities,  having  become  rich,  will  consume  a 
great  deal,  and  impart  prosperity  to  all  the  other  branches  of 
our  national  industry. 

If  you  urge  that  the  light  of  the  sun  is  a  gratuitous  gift  of 
nature,  and  that  to  reject  such  gifts  is  to  reject  wealth  itself 
under  pretense  of  encouraging  the  means  of  acquiring  it,  we 
would  caution  you  against  giving  a  death-blow  to  your  own 
policy.  .  Remember  that  hitherto  you  have  always  repelled  for- 
eign products,  because  they  approximate  more  nearly  than  home 
products  to  the  character  of  gratuitous  gifts.  To  comply  with  the 
exactions  of  other  monopolists,  you  have  only  Jialf  a  motive;  and 
to  repulse  us  simply  because  we  stand  on  a  stronger  vantage- 
ground  than  others  would  be  to  adopt  the  equation,  4-x+  =  — ;  in 
other  words,  it  would  be  to  heap  absurdity  upon  absurdity. 

Nature  and  human  labor  co-operate  in  various  proportions 
(depending  on  countries  and  climates)  in  the  5>roduction  of  com- 


FREDERIC   BASTIAT  1613 

modities.  The  part  which  nature  executes  is  always  gratuitous-, 
it  is  the  part  executed  by  human  labor  which  constitutes  value, 
and  is  paid  for. 

If  a  Lisbon  orange  sells  for  half  the  price  of  a  Paris  orange, 
it  is  because  natural  and  consequently  gratuitous  heat  does  for 
the  one  what  artificial  and  therefore  expensive  heat  must  do  for 
the  other. 

When  an  orange  comes  to  us  from  Portugal,  we  may  conclude 
that  it  is  furnished  in  part  gratuitously,  in  part  for  an  onerous 
consideration;  in  other  words,  it  comes  to  us  at  half-price  as 
compared  with  those  of  Paris. 

Now,  it  is  precisely  the  gratuitous  half  (pardon  the  word) 
which  we  contend  should  be  excluded.  You  say.  How  can  nat- 
ural labor  sustain  competition  with  foreign  labor,  when  the 
former  has  all  the  work  to  do,  and  the  latter  only  does  one-half, 
the  sun  supplying  the  remainder  ?  But  if  this  half,  being  gratu- 
itous, determines  you  to  exclude  competition,  how  should  the 
zvholc,  being  gratuitous,  induce  you  to  admit  competition  ?  If 
you  were  consistent,  you  would,  while  excluding  as  hurtful  to 
native  industry  what  is  half  gratuitous,  exclude  a  fortiori  and 
with  double  zeal  that  which  is  altogether  gratuitous. 

Once  more,  when  products  such  as  coal,  iron,  corn,  or  textile 
fabrics  are  sent  us  from  abroad,  and  we  can  acquire  them  with 
less  labor  than  if  we  made  them  ourselves,  the  difference  is  a 
free  gift  conferred  upon  us.  The  gift  is  more  or  less  considera- 
ble in  proportion  as  the  difference  is  more  or  less  great.  It 
amounts  to  a  quarter,  a  half,  or  three-quarters  of  the  value  of 
the  product,  when  the  foreigner  only  asks  us  for  three-fourths, 
a  half,  or  a  quarter  of  the  price  we  should  otherwise  pay.  It  is 
as  perfect  and  complete  as  it  can  be,  when  the  donor  (like  the 
sun  in  furnishing  us  with  light)  asks  us  for  nothing.  The  ques- 
tion, and  we  ask  it  formally,  is  this,  Do  you  desire  for  our 
country  the  benefit  of  gratuitous  consumption,  or  the  pretended 
advantages  of  onerous  production  ?  Make  your  choice,  but  be 
logical;  for  as  long  as  you  exclude,  as  you  do,  coal,  iron,  corn, 
foreign  fabrics,  ifi  proportion  as  their  price  approximates  to  zero, 
what  inconsistency  would  it  be  to  admit  the  light  of  the  sun,  the 
price  of  which  is  already  at  zero  during  the  entire  day! 


l6r4  FREDERIC   BASTIAT 


STULTA  AND  PUERA 


THERE  were,  no  matter  where,  two  towns  called  Fooltown  and 
Babytown.  They  completed  at  g-reat  cost  a  highway  from 
the  one  town  to  the  other.  When  this  was  done,  Fooltown  said  to 
herself,  "See  how  Babytown  inundates  us  with  her  products;  we 
must  see  to  it.*^  In  consequence,  they  created  and  paid  a  body 
of  obstructives,  so  called  because  their  business  was  to  place 
obstacles  in  the  way  of  traffic  coming  from  Babytown.  Soon 
afterwards  Babytown  did  the  same. 

At  the  end  of  some  centuries,  knowledge  having  in  the 
interim  made  great  progress,  the  common  sense  of  Babytown 
enabled  her  to  see  that  such  reciprocal  obstacles  could  only  be 
reciprocally  hurtful.  She  therefore  sent  a  diplomatist  to  Fool- 
town, who,  laying  aside  official  phraseology,   spoke  to  this  effect: 

"  We  have  made  a  highway,  and  now  we  throw  obstacles  in 
the  way  of  using  it.  This  is  absurd.  It  would  have  been  better 
to  have  left  things  as  they  were.  We  should  not,  in  that  case, 
have  had  to  pay  for  making  the  road  in  the  first  place,  nor 
afterwards  have  incurred  the  expense  of  maintaining  obstructives. 
In  the  name  of  Babytown,  I  come  to  propose  to  you,  not  to  give 
up  opposing  each  other  all  at  once,  —  that  would  be  to  act  upon 
a  principle,  and  we  despise  principles  as  much  as  you  do,  — but 
to  lessen  somewhat  the  present  obstacles,  taking  care  to  estimate 
equitably  the  respective  sacrifices  we  make  for  this  purpose.** 

So  spoke  the  diplomatist.  Fooltown  asked  for  time  to  con- 
sider the  proposal,  and  proceeded  to  consult  in  succession  her 
manufacturers  and  agriculturists.  At  length,  after  the  lapse  of 
some  years,   she  declared   that  the  negotiations  were  broken  off. 

On  receiving  this  intimation,  the  inhabitants  of  Babytown 
held  a  meeting.  An  old  gentleman  (they  always  suspected  he 
had  been  secretly  bought  by  Fooltown)  rose  and  said:  —  "The 
obstacles  created  by  Fooltown  injure  our  sales,  which  is  a  mis- 
fortune. Those  which  we  have  ourselves  created  injure  our  pur- 
chases, which  is  another  misfortune.  With  reference  to  the  first, 
we  are  powerless;  but  the  second  rests  with  ourselves.  Let  us 
at  least  get  quit  of  one,  since  we  cannot  rid  ourselves  of  both 
evils.  Let  us  suppress  our  obstriictives  without  requiring  Fool- 
town to  do  the  same.  Some  day,  no  doubt,  she  will  come  to 
know  her  own  interests  better.* 


FREDERIC  BASTIAT 


1615 


A  second  counselor,  a  practical,  matter-of-fact  man,  guiltless 
of  any  acquaintance  with  principles,  and  brought  up  in  the  ways 
of  his  forefathers,  replied  — 

"  Don't  listen  to  that  Utopian  dreamer,  that  theorist,  that 
innovator,  that  economist;  that  Stiiltomaniac.  We  shall  all  be 
undone  if  the  stoppages  of  the  road  are  not  equalized,  weighed, 
and  balanced  between  Fooltown  and  Baby  town.  There  would  be 
greater  difficulty  in  going  than  in  coming,  in  exporting  than  in 
importing.  We  should  find  ourselves  in  the  same  condition  of 
inferiority  relatively  to  Fooltown,  as  Havre,  Nantes,  Bordeaux, 
Lisbon,  London,  Hamburg,  and  New  Orleans,  are  with  relation 
to  the  towns  situated  at  the  sources  of  the  Seine,  the  Loire,  the 
Garonne,  the  Tagus,  the  Thames,  the  Elbe,  and  the  Mississippi; 
for  it  is  more  difficult  for  a  ship  to  ascend  than  to  descend  a 
river.  \A  Voice  —  **  Towns  at  the  embouchures  of  rivers  prosper 
more  than  towns  at  their  source.**]  This  is  impossible.  \Same 
Voice — ^^  But  it  is  so.**]  Well,  if  it  be  so,  they  have  prospered 
contrary  to  rules ?^ 

Reasoning  so  conclusive  convinced  the  assembly,  and  the  ora- 
tor followed  up  his  victory  by  talking  largely  of  national  independ- 
ence, national  honor,  national  dignity,  national  labor,  inundation 
of  products,  tributes,  murderous  competition.  In  short,  he  carried 
the  vote  in  favor  of  the  maintenance  of  obstacles;  and  if  you  are 
at  all  curious  on  the  subject,  I  can  point  out  to  you  countries, 
where  you  wall  see  with  your  own  eyes  Roadmakers  and  Obstruct- 
ives working  together  on  the  most  friendly  terms  possible,  under 
the  orders  of  the  same  legislative  assembly,  and  at  the  expense 
of  the  same  taxpayers,  the  one  set  endeavoring  to  clear  the  road, 
and  the  other  set  doing  their  utmost  to  render  it  impassable. 


i6i6  FREDERIC   BASTIAT 

INAPPLICABLE     TERMS 
From  <  Economic  Sophisms  > 

LET  lis  give  up     .     .     .     the  puerility  of  applying  to  industrial 
competition   phrases  applicable  to  war, —  a  way  of  speaking 
which  is  only  specious  when  applied  to  competition  between 
two    rival    trades.      The   moment   we    come    to    take    into    account 
the  effect   produced   on    the   general   prosperity,   the   analogy  dis- 
appears. 

In  a  battle,  every  one  who  is  killed  diminishes  by  so  much 
the  strength  of  the  army.  In  industry,  a  workshop  is  shut  up 
only  when  what  it  produced  is  obtained  by  the  public  fron? 
another  source  and  in  greater  abundance.  Figure  a  state  of 
things  where  for  one  man  killed  on  the  spot  two  should  rise 
up  full  of  life  and  vigor.  Were  such  a  state  of  things  possible, 
war  would  no  longer  merit  its  name. 

This,  however,  is  the  distinctive  character  of  what  is  so 
absurdly  called  industrial  zvar. 

Let  the  Belgians  and  the  English  lower  the  price  of  their 
iron  ever  so  much;  let  them,  if  they  will,  send  it  to  us  for 
nothing:  this  might  extinguish  some  of  our  blast-furnaces;  but 
immediately,  and  as  a  necessary  consequence  of  this  very  cheap- 
ness, there  would  rise  up  a  thousand  other  branches  of  industry 
more  profitable  than  the  one  which  had  been  superseded. 

We  arrive,  then,  at  the  conclusion  that  domination  by  labor 
is  impossible,  and  a  contradiction  in  terms,  seeing  that  all  supe- 
riority which  manifests  itself  among  a  people  means  cheapness, 
and  tends  only  to  impart  force-  to  all  other  nations.  Let  us 
banish,  then,  from  political  economy  all  terms  borrowed  from 
the  military  vocabulary:  to  fight  with  equal  weapofis,  to  conquer, 
to  crush,  to  stifle,  to  be  beaten,  invasion,  tribute,  etc.  What  do 
such  phrases  mean  ?  Squeeze  them,  and  you  obtain  nothing. 
Yes,  you  do  obtain  something;  for  from  such  words 
proceed  absurd  errors,  and  fatal  and  pestilent  prejudices.  Such 
phrases  tend  to  arrest  the  fusion  of  nations,  are  inimical  to  their 
peaceful,  imiversal,  and  indissoluble  alliance,  and  retard  the  pro- 
gress of  the  human  race. 


i6i7 


CHARLES  BAUDELAIRE 

(1821-1867) 

BY  GRACE   KING 

Charles  Baudelaire  was  born  in  Paris  in  182 1;  he  died  there 
in  1867.  Between  these  dates  lies  the  evolution  of  one  of 
the  most  striking  personalities  in  French  literature,  and 
the  development  of  an  influence  which  affected  not  only  the  litera- 
ture of  the  poet's  own  country,  but  that  of  all  Europe  and  America. 
The  genuineness  of  both  personality  and  influence  was  one  of  the 
first  critical  issues  raised  after  Baudelaire's  advent  into  literature: 
it  is  still  one  of  the  main  issues  in  all  critical  consideration  of 
him.  A  question  which  involves  by  impli- 
cation the  whole  relation  of  poetry,  and  of 
art  as  such,  to  life,  is  obviously  one  that 
furnishes  more  than  literary  issues,  and 
engages  other  than  literary  interests.  And 
thus,  by  easy  and  natural  corollaries,  Bau- 
delaire has  been  made  a  subject  of  appeal 
not  only  to  judgment,  but  even  to  con- 
science. At  first  sight,  therefore,  he  ap- 
pears surrounded  either  by  an  intricate 
moral  maze,  or  by  a  no  less  troublesome 
confusion  of  contradictory  theories  from 
opposing  camps  rather  than  schools  of  criti- 
cism. But  no  author  —  no  dead  author — is 
more  accessible,  or  more  communicable  in  his. way;  his  poems,  his 
theories,  and  a  goodly  portion  of  his  life,  lie  at  the  disposition  of  any 
reader  who  cares  to  know  him. 

The  Baudelaire  legend,  as  it  is  called  by  French  critics,  is  one  of 
the  blooms  of  that  romantic  period  of  French  literature  which  is 
presided  over  by  the  genius  of  Theophile  Gautier.  Indeed,  it  is 
against  the  golden  background  of  Gautier's  imagination  that  the  pict- 
ure of  the  youthful  poet  is  best  preserved  for  us,  appearing  in  all 
the  delicate  and  illusive  radiance  of  the  youth  and  beauty  of  legend- 
ary saints  on  the  gilded  canvases  of  mediasval  art.  The  radiant 
youth  and  beauty  may  be  no  more  truthful  to  nature  than  the  gilded 
background,  but  the  fact  of  the  impression  sought  to  be  conveyed  is 
not  on  that  account  to  be  disbelieved. 

Baudelaire.   Gautier   writes,  was   born  in  the  Rue  Hautefeuille,  in 
one  of  those  old  houses  with  a  pepper-pot  turret  at  the  corner  which 
III — 102 


Charles  Baudelaire 


I6l8  CHARLES  BAUDELAIRE 

have  disappeared  from  the  city  under  the  advancing  improvement  of 
straight  lines  and  clear  openings.  His  father,  a  gentleman  of  learn- 
ing, retained  all  the  eighteenth-century  courtesy  and  distinction  of 
manner,  which,  like  the  pepper-pot  turret,  has  also  disappeared  under 
the  advance  of  Republican  enlightenment.  An  absent-minded,  re- 
served child,  Baudelaire  attracted  no  especial  attention  during  his 
school  days.  When  they  were  over,  his  predilection  for  a  literary 
vocation  became  known.  From  this  his  parents  sought  to  divert  him 
by  sending  him  to  travel.  He  voyaged  through  the  Indian  Ocean, 
visiting  the  great  islands:  Madagascar,  Ceylon,  Mauritius,  Bourbon. 
Had  there  been  a  chance  for  irresolution  in  the  mind  of  the  youth, 
this  voyage  destroyed  it  forever.  His  imagination,  essentially  exotic, 
succumbed  to  the  passionate  charm  of  a  new,  strange,  and  splendidly 
glowing  form  of  nature;  the  stars,  the  skies,  the  gigantic  vegetation, 
the  color,  the  perfumes,  the  dark-skinned  figures  in  white  draperies, 
formed  for  him  at  that  time  a  heaven,  for  which  his  senses  unceas- 
ingly yearned  afterwards  amid  the  charms  and  enchantments  of  civ- 
ilization, in  the  world's  capital  of  pleasure  and  luxury.  Returning  to 
Paris,  of  age  and  master  of  his  fortune,  he  established  himself  in  his 
independence,  openly  adopting  his  chosen  career. 

He  and  Theophile  Gautier  met  for  the  first  time  in  1849,  in  the 
Hotel  Pimodau,  where  were  held  the  meetings  of  the  Hashish  Club. 
Here  in  the  great  Louis  XIV.  saloon,  with  its  wood-work  relieved 
with  dull  gold;  its  corbeled  ceiling,  painted  after  the  manner  of 
Lesueur  and  Poussin,  with  satyrs  pursuing  nymphs  through  reeds  and 
foliage;  its  great  red  and  white  spotted  marble  mantel,  with  gilded 
elephant  harnessed  like  the  elephant  of  Porus  in  Lebrun's  picture, 
bearing  an  enameled  clock  with  blue  ciphers;  its  antique  chairs  and 
sofas,  covered  with  faded  tapestry  representing  himting  scenes,  hold- 
ing the  reclining  figures  of  the  members  of  the  club;  women  cele- 
brated in  the  world  of  beauty,  men  in  the  world  of  letters,  meeting 
not  only  for  the  enjoyment  of  the  artificial  ecstasies  of  the  drug,  but 
to  talk  of  art,  literature,  and  love,  as  in  the  days  of  the  Decameron  — 
here  Baudelaire  made  what  might  be  called  his  historic  impression 
upon  literature.  He  was  at  that  time  twenty-eight  years  of  age;  and 
even  in  that  assemblage,  in  those  surroundings,  his  personality  was 
striking.  His  black  hair,  worn  close  to  the  head,  grew  in  regular 
scallops  over  a  forehead  of  dazzling  whiteness;  his  eyes,  the  color  of 
Spanish  tobacco,  were  spiritual,  deep,  penetrating,  perhaps  too  insist- 
ently so,  in  expression;  the  mobile  sinuous  mouth  had  the  ironical 
voluptuous  lips  that  Leonardo  da  Vinci  loved  to  paint;  the  nose  was 
delicate  and  sensitive,  with  quivering  nostrils;  a  deep  dimple  accent- 
uated the  chin;  the  bluish-black  tint  of  the  shaven  skin,  softened 
•with    rice-powder,    contrasted   with   the   clear  rose   and   white   of  the 


CHARLES  BAUDELAIRE 


1619 


upper  part  of  his  cheeks.  Always  dressed  with  meticulous  neatness 
and  simplicity,  following  English  rather  than  French  taste;  in  man- 
ner punctiliously  observant  of  the  strictest  conventionality,  scrupu- 
lously, even  excessively  polite;  in  talk  measuring  his  phrases,  using 
only  the  most  select  terms,  and  pronouncing  certain  words  as  if  the 
sound  itself  possessed  a  certain  subtle,  mystical  value,  —  throwing 
his  voice  into  capitals  and  italics;  —  in  contrast  with  the  dress  and 
manners  about  him,  he,  according  to  Gautier,  looked  like  a  dandy 
who  had  strayed  into  Bohemia. 

The  contrast  was  no  less  violent  between  Baudelaire's  form  and 
the  substance  of  his  conversation.  With  a  simple,  natural,  and  per- 
fectly impartial  manner,  as  if  he  were  conveying  commonplace 
information  about  every-day  life,  he  would  advance  some  axiom 
monstrously  Satanic,  or  sustain,  with  the  utmost  grace  and  coolness, 
some  mathematical  extravagance  in  the  way  of  a  theory.  And  no 
one  could  so  inflexibly  push  a  paradox  to  the  uttermost  limits, 
regardless  of  consequences  to  received  notions  of  morality  or  reli- 
gion; always  employing  the  most  rigorous  methods  of  logic  and 
reason.  His  wit  was  found  to  lie  neither  in  words  nor  thoughts,  but 
in  the  peculiar  standpoint  from  which  he  regarded  things,  a  stand- 
point which  altered  their  outlines, — like  those  of  objects  looked  down 
upon  from  a  bird's  flight,  or  looked  up  to  on  a  ceiling.  In  this  way, 
to  continue  the  exposition  of  Gautier,  Baudelaire  saw  relations  inap- 
preciable to  others,  whose  logical  bizarrerie  was  startling. 

His  first  productions  were  critical  articles  for  the  Parisian  journals; 
articles  that  at  the  time  passed  unperceived,  but  which  to-day 
furnish  perhaps  the  best  evidences  of  that  keen  artistic  insight  and 
foresight  of  the  poet,  which  was  at  once  his  greatest  good  and  evil 
genius.  In  1856  appeared  his  translation  of  the  works  of  Edgar  Allan 
Poe;  a  translation  which  may  be  said  to  have  naturalized  Poe  in 
French  literature,  where  he  has  played  a  role  curiously  like  that  of 
Baudelaire  in  Poe's  native  literature.  The  natural  predisposition  of 
Baudelaire,  which  fitted  him  to  be  the  French  interpreter  of  Poe, 
rendered  him  also  peculiarly  sensitive  to  Poe's  mysteriously  subtle 
yet  rankly  vigorous  charms;  and  he  showed  himself  as  sensitively 
responsive  to  these  as  he  had  been  to  the  exotic  charms  of  the  East. 
The  influence  upon  his  intellectual  development  was  decisive  and 
final.  His  indebtedness  to  Poe,  or  it  might  better  be  said,  his  iden- 
tification with  Poe,  is  visible  not  only  in  his  paradoxical  manias,  but 
in  his  poetry,  and  in  his  theories  of  art  and  poetry  set  forth  in  his 
various  essays  and  fugitive  prose  expressions,  and  notably  in  his 
introduction  to  his  translations  of  the  American  author's  works 

In  1857  appeared  the  ^Fleurs  du  MaP  (Flowers  of  Evil),  the  vol- 
ume of  poems  upon  which  Baudelaire's   fame   as  a  poet  is  founded. 


l620  CHARLES  BAUDELAIRE 

It  was  the  result  of  his  thirty  years'  devotion  to  the  study  of  his  art 
and  meditation  upon  it.  Six  of  the  poems  were  suppressed  by  the 
censor  of  the  Second  Empire.  This  action  called  out,  in  form  of 
protest,  that  fine  appreciation  and  defense  of  Baudelaire's  genius  and 
best  defense  of  his  methods,  by  four  of  the  foremost  critics  and 
keenest  artists  in  poetry  of  Paris,  which  form,  with  the  letters  from 
Sainte-Beuve,  de  Custine,  and  Deschamps,  a  precious  appendix  to  the 
third  edition  of  the  poems. 

The  name  *■  Flowers  of  Evil  *  is  a  sufficient  indication  of  the  inten- 
tions and  aim  of  the  author.  Their  companions  in  the  volume  are: 
<  Spleen  and  Ideal,*  <  Parisian  Pictures,*  <Wine,*  <  Revolt,*  <  Death.* 
The  simplest  description  of  them  is  that  they  are  indescribable. 
They  must  not  only  be  read,  they  must  be  studied  repeatedly  to  be 
understood  as  they  deserve.  The  paradox  of  their  most  exquisite  art, 
and  their  at  times  most  revolting  revelations  of  the  degradations  and 
perversities  of  humanity,  can  be  accepted  with  full  appreciation  of 
the  author's  meaning  only  by  granting  the  same  paradox  to  his 
genuine  nature ;  by  crediting  him  with  being  not  only  an  ardent 
idealist  of  art  for  art's  sake,  but  an  idealist  of  humanity  for  human- 
ity's sake;  one  to  whom  humanity,  even  in  its  lowest  degradations 
and  vilest  perversions,  is  sublimely  sacred;  —  one  to  whom  life  offered 
but  one  tragedy,  that  of  human  souls  flying  like  Cain  from  a  guilt- 
stricken  paradise,  but  pursued  by  the  remorse  of  innocence,  and 
scourged  by  the  consciousness  of  their  own  infinitude. 

But  the  poet's  own  words  are  the  best  explanation  of  his  aim  and 
intention :  — • 

"Poetry,  though  one  delve  ever  so  little  into  his  own  self,  interrogate  his 
own  soul,  recall  his  memories  of  enthusiasms,  has  no  other  end  than  itself;  it 
cannot  have  any  other  aim,  and  no  poem  will  be  so  great,  so  noble,  so  truly 
worthy  of  the  name  of  poem,  as  that  which  shall  have  been  written  solely  for 
the  pleasure  of  writing  a  poem.  I  do  not  wish  to  say  that  poetry  should  not 
ennoble  manners  —  that  its  final  result  should  not  be  to  raise  man  above  vul- 
gar interests.  That  would  be  an  e\ndent  absurdity.  I  say  that  if  the  poet 
has  pursued  a  moral  end,  he  has  diminished  his  poetic  force,  and  it  would 
not  be  imprudent  to  wager  that  his  work  would  be  bad.  Poetry  cannot, 
under  penalty  of  death  or  forfeiture,  assimilate  itself  to  science  or  morality. 
It  has  not  Truth  for  object,  it  has  only  itself.  Truth's  modes  of  demonstra. 
tion  are  different  and  elsewhere.  Truth  has  nothing  to  do  with  ballads ;  all 
that  constitutes  the  charm,  the  irresistible  grace  of  a  ballad,  would  strip 
Truth  of  its  authority  and  power.  Cold,  calm,  impassive,  the  demonstrative 
temperament  rejects  the  diamonds  and  flowers  of  the  muse ;  it  is,  therefore,  the 
absolute  inverse  of  the  poetic  temperament.  Pure  Intellect  aims  at  Truth, 
Taste  shows  us  Beauty,  and  the  Moral  Sense  teaches  us  Duty.  It  is  true 
that  the  middle  term  has  intimate  connection  with  the  two  extremes,  and 
only  separates  itself  from  Moral  Sense  by  a  difference  so  slight  that  Aristotle 


CHARLES  BAUDELAIRE  162I 

did  not  hesitate  to  class  some  of  its  delicate  operations  amongst  the  virtues. 
And  accordingly  what,  above  all,  exasperates  the  man  of  taste  is  the  spectacle 
of  vice,  is  its  deformity,  its  disproportions.  Vice  threatens  the  just  and  true, 
and  revolts  intellect  and  conscience ;  but  as  an  outrage  upon  harmony,  as  dis- 
sonance, it  would  particularly  wound  certain  poetic  minds,  and  I  do  not  think 
it  would  be  scandal  to  consider  all  infractions  of  moral  beauty  as  a  species  of 
sin  against  rhythm  and  universal  prosody. 

« It  is  this  admirable,  this  immortal  instinct  of  the  Beautiful  which  makes 
us  consider  the  earth  and  its  spectacle  as  a  sketch,  as  a  correspondent  of 
Heaven.  The  insatiable  thirst  for  all  that  is  beyond  that  which  life  veils  is 
the  most  living  proof  of  our  immortality.  It  is  at  once  by  poetry  and  across 
it,  across  and  through  music,  that  the  soul  gets  a  glimpse  of  the  splendors 
that  lie  beyond  the  tomb.  And  when  an  exquisite  poem  causes  tears  to  rise 
in  the  eye,  these  tears  are  not  the  proof  of  excessive  enjoyment,  but  rather 
the  testimony  of  a  moved  melancholy,  of  a  postulation  of  the  nerves,  of  a 
nature  exiled  in  the  imperfect,  which  wishes  to  take  immediate  possession, 
even  on  earth,  of  a  revealed  paradise. 

« Thus  the  principle  of  poetry  is  strictly  and  simply  human  aspiration 
toward  superior  beauty;  and  the  manifestation  of  this  principle  is  enthusi- 
asm and  uplifting  of  the  soul, —  enthusiasm  entirely  independent  of  passion, — 
which  is  the  intoxication  of  heart,  and  of  truth  which  is  the  food  of  reason. 
For  passion  is  a  natural  thing,  even  too  natural  not  to  introduce  a  wounding, 
discordant  tone  into  the  domain  of  pure  beauty;  too  familiar,  too  violent,  not 
to  shock  the  pure  Desires,  the  gracious  Melancholies,  and  the  noble  Despairs 
which  inhabit  the  supernatural  regions  of  poetiy.» 

Baudelaire  saw  himself  as  the  poet  of  a  decadent  epoch,  an  epoch 
in  which  art  had  arrived  at  the  over-ripened  maturity  of  an  aging 
civilization;  a  glowing,  savorous,  fragrant  over-ripeness,  that  is 
already  softening  into  decomposition.  And  to  be  the  fitting  poet  of 
such  an  epoch,  he  modeled  his  style  on  that  of  the  poets  of  the 
Latin  decadence;  for,  as  he  expressed  it  for  himself  and  for  the 
modern  school  of  "decadents'^  in  French  poetry  founded  upon  his 
name :  — 

«Does  it  not  seem  to  the  reader,  as  to  me,  that  the  language  of  the  last 
Latin  decadence  —  that  supreme  sigh  of  a  robust  person  already  transformed 
and  prepared  for  spiritual  life  —  is  singularly  fitted  to  express  passion  as  it  is 
understood  and  felt  by  the  modem  world  ?  Mysticism  is  the  other  end  of  the 
magnet  of  which  Catullus  and  his  band,  brutal  and  purely  epidermic  poets, 
knew  only  the  sensual  pole.  In  this  wonderful  language,  solecisms  and  bar- 
barisms seem  to  express  the  forced  carelessness  of  a  passion  which  forgets 
itself,  and  mocks  at  rules.  The  words,  used  in  a  novel  sense,  reveal  the 
charming  awkwardness  of  a  barbarian  from  the  North,  kneeling  before  Roman 
Beauty.  >> 

Nature,  the  nature  of  Wordsworth  and  Tennyson,  did  not  exist  for 
Baudelaire;  inspiration  he  denied;  simplicity  he  scouted  as  an  an- 
achronism in  a  decadent  period  of  perfected  art.  whose  last  word  in 


j522  CHARLES   BAUDELAIRE 

poetry  should  be  the  apotheosis  of  the  Artificial.  «  A  little  charlatan- 
ism is  permitted  even  to  genius,  *^  he  wrote :  **  it  is  like  f ard  on  the 
cheeks  of  a  naturally  beautiful  woman;  an  appetizer  for  the  mind." 
Again  he  expresses  himself:  — 

« It  seems  to  me,  two  women  are  presented  to  me,  one  a  rustic  matron, 
repulsive  in  health  and  virtue,  without  manners,  without  expression ;  in  short, 
owing  nothing  except  to  simple  nature;  —  the  other,  one  of  those  beauties  that 
dominate  and  oppress  memory,  uniting  to  her  original  and  unfathomable 
charms  all  the  eloquence  of  dress;  who  is  mistress  of  her  part,  conscious  of 
and  queen  of  herself,  speaking  like  an  instrument  well  tuned;  with  looks 
freighted  with  thought,  yet  letting  flow  only  what  she  would.  My  choice 
would  not  be  doubtful;  and  yet  there  are  pedagogic  sphinxes  who  would 
reproach  me  as  recreant  to  classical  honor. » 

In  music  it  was  the  same  choice.  He  saw  the  consummate  art 
and  artificiality  of  Wagner,  and  preferred  it  to  all  other  music,  at  a 
iime  when  the  German  master  was  ignored  and  despised  by  a  classic- 
ized musical  world.  In  perfumes  it  was  not  the  simple  fragrance  of 
the  rose  or  violet  that  he  loved,  but  musk  and  amber;  and  he  said, 
<<my  soul  hovers  over  perfumes  as  the  souls  of  other  men  hover 
over  music.'* 

Besides  his  essays  and  sketches,  Baudelaire  published  in  prose  a 
novelette;  ^Fanfarlo,*  <  Artificial  Paradises,*  opium  and  hashish,  imi- 
tations of  De  Quincey's  *  Confessions  of  an  Opium  Eater  * ;  and  <  Little 
Prose  Poems,*  also  inspired  by  a  book,  the  <  Gaspard  de  la  Nuit  *  of 
Aloysius  Bertrand,  and  which  Baudelaire  thus  describes:  — 

«The  idea  came  to  me  to  attempt  something  analogous,  and  to  apply  to 
the  description  of  modem  life,  or  rather  a  modern  and  more  abstract  life,  the 
methods  he  had  applied  to  the  painting  of  ancient  life,  so  strangely  pictur- 
esque. Which  one  of  us  in  his  ambitious  days  has  not  dreamed  of  a  miracle 
of  poetic  prose,  musical,  without  rhythm  and  without  rhyme,  supple  enough 
and  rugged  enough  to  adapt  itself  to  the  lyrical  movements  of  the  soul,  to 
the  undulations  of  reverie,  and  to  the  assaults  of  conscience  ?» 

Failing  health  induced  Baudelaire  to  quit  Paris  and  establish 
himself  in  Brussels;  but  he  received  no  benefit  from  the  change  of 
climate,  and  the  first  symptoms  of  his  terrible  malady  manifested 
themselves  —  a  slowness  of  speech,  and  hesitation  over  words.  As  a 
slow  and  sententious  enunciation  was  characteristic  of  him,  the 
symptoms  attracted  no  attention,  until  he  fell  under  a  sudden  and 
violent  attack.  He  was  brought  back  to  Paris  and  conveyed  to  a 
«maison  de  sante,**  where  he  died,  after  lingering  several  months  in 
a  paralyzed  condition,  motionless,  speechless;  nothing  alive  in  him 
but  thought,  seeking  to  express  itself  through  his  eyes. 

The  nature  of  Baudelaire's  malady  and  death  was,  by  the  public 
at  large,  accepted  as  confirmation  of  the  suspicion  that  he  was  in  the 


CHARLES  BAUDELAIRE 


1623 


habft  of  seeking  his  inspiration  in  the  excitation  of  hashish  and 
opium.  His  friends,  however,  recall  the  fact  of  his  incessant  work, 
and  intense  striving  after  his  ideal  in  art;  his  fatigue  of  body  and 
mind,  and  his  increasing  weariness  of  spirit  under  the  accumulating 
worries  and  griefs  of  a  life  for  which  his  very  genius  unfitted  him. 
He  was  also  known  to  be  sober  in  his  tastes,  as  all  great  workers 
are.  That  he  had  lent  himself  more  than  once  to  the  physiological 
and  psychological  experiment  of  hashish  was  admitted;  but  he  was  a 
rare  visitor  at  the  seances  in  the  saloon  of  the  Hotel  Pimodau,  and 
came  as  a  simple  observer  of  others.  His  masterly  description  of 
the  hallucinations  produced  by  hashish  is  accompanied  by  analytical 
and  moral  commentaries  which  unmistakably  express  repugnance  to 
and  condemnation  of  the  drug:  — 

« Admitting  for  the  moment,  >>  he  writes,  «the  hypothesis  of  a  constitution 
tempered  enough  and  strong  enough  to  resist  the  evil  effects  of  the  perfidious 
drug,  another,  a  fatal  and  terrible  danger,  must  be  thought  of, —  that  of  habit. 
He  who  has  recourse  to  a  poison  to  enable  him  to  think,  will  soon  not  be 
able  to  think  without  the  poison.  Imagine  the  horrible  fate  of  a  man  whose 
paralyzed  imagination  is  unable  to  work  without  the  aid  of  hashish  or  opium. 
But  man  is  not  so  deprived  of  honest  means  of  gaining  heaven, 
that  he  is  obliged  to  invoke  the  aid  of  pharmacy  or  witchcraft;  he  need  not 
sell  his  soul  in  order  to  pay  for  the  intoxicating  caresses  and  the  love  of 
houris.  What  is  a  paradise  that  one  purchases  at  the  expense  of  one's  own 
soul  ?  .  .  .  Unfortunate  wretches  who  have  neither  fasted  nor  prayed,  and 
who  have  refused  the  redemption  of  labor,  ask  from  black  magic  the  means 
to  elevate  themselves  at  a  single  stroke  to  a  supernatural  existence.  Magic 
dupes  them,  and  lights  for  them  a  false  happiness  and  a  false  light;  while  we, 
poets  and  philosophers,  who  have  regenerated  our  souls  by  incessant  work  and 
contemplation,  by  the  assiduous  exercise  of  the  will  and  permanent  nobility  of 
intention,  we  have  created  for  our  use  a  garden  of  true  beauty.  Confiding 
in  the  words  that  <  faith  will  remove  mountains, >  we  have  accomplished  the 
one  miracle  for  which  God  has  gfiven  us  license.  >> 

The  perfect  art-form  of  Baudelaire's  poems  makes  translation  of 
them  indeed  a  literal  impossibility.  The  <  Little  Old  Women,  >  <The 
Voyage,  >  <  The  Voyage  to  Cytherea,>  <A  Red-haired  Beggar-girl,  > 
*The  Seven  Old  Men,'  and  sonnet  after  sonnet  in  < Spleen  and  Ideal,* 
seem  to  rise  only  more  and  more  ineffable  from  every  attempt  to 
filter  them  through  another  language,  or  through  another  mind  than 
that  of  their  original,  and,  it  would  seem,  one  possible  creator. 


^  Cf 


1624 


CHARLES  BAUDELAIRE 


MEDITATION 


B 


E  PITIFUL,  my  sorrow — be  thou  still: 

For  night  thy  thirst  was  —  lo,  it  falleth  down, 

Slowly  darkening  it  veils  the  town, 
Bringing  its  peace  to  some,  to  some  its  ill. 


While  the  dull  herd  in  its  mad  career 
Under  the  pitiless  scourge,  the  lash  of  unclean  desire, 
Goes  culling  remorse  with  fingers  that  never  tire:  — 
My  sorrow, — thy  hand!     Come,  sit  thou  by  me  here. 

Here,  far  from  them  all.     From  heaven's  high  balconies 
See!  in  their  threadbare  robes  the  dead  years  cast  their  eyes; 
And  from  the  depths  below  regret's  wan  smiles  appear. 

The  sun,   about  to  set,  under  the  arch  sinks  low. 
Trailing  its  weltering  pall  far  through  the  East  aglow. 
Hark,  dear  one,  hark!     Sweet  night's  approach  is  near. 

Translated  for  the  <  Library  of  the  World's  Best  Literature.* 


T 


THE   DEATH   OF   THE   POOR 

*His  is  death  the  consoler  —  death  that  bids  live  again; 
Here  life  its  aim:  here  is  our  hope  to  be  found, 
Making,  like  magic  elixir,  our  poor  weak  heads  to  swim  round. 
And   giving  us  heart   for   the   struggle   till   night  makes   end   of  the 
pain. 

Athwart  the  hurricane  —  athwart  the  snow  and  the  sleet. 
Afar  there  twinkles  over  the  black  earth's  waste. 
The  light  of  the    Scriptural  inn  where  the  weary  and  the  faint  may 
taste 
The  sweets  of  welcome,  the  plenteous  feast  and  the  secure  retreat, 

It  is  an  angel,  in  whose  soothing  palms 
Are  held  the  boon  of  sleep  and  dreamy  balms, 
Who  makes  a  bed  for  poor  unclothed  men. 
It  is  the  pride  of  the  gods  —  the  all-mysterious  room. 
The  pauper's  purse  —  this  fatherland  of  gloom. 

The  open  gate  to  heaven,  and  heavens  beyond  our  ken. 

Translated  for  the  < Library  of  the  World's  Best  Literature.) 


CHARLES  BAUDELAIRE 


MUSIC 


1625 


S 


iwKKT  music  sweeps  me  like  the  sea 
Toward  my  pale  star, 
Whether  the  clovids  be  there  or  all  the  air  be  free 

I  sail  afar. 
With  front  outspread  and  swelling  breasts, 

On  swifter  sail 
I  bound  through  the  steep  waves'  foamy  crests 
Under  night's  veil. 
Vibrate  within  me  I  feel  all  the  passions  that  lash 

A  bark  in  distress: 
By  the  blast  I  am  lulled  —  by  the  tempest's  wild  crash 
On  the  salt  wilderness. 
Then  comes  the  dead  calm  —  mirrored  there 
I  behold  my  despair. 

Translated  for  the  <  Library  of  the  World's  Best  Literature.  > 


B 


THE    BROKEN    BELL 

ITTER  and  sweet,   when  wintry  evenings  fall 

Across  the  quivering,  smoking  hearth,  to  hear 
Old  memory's  notes  sway  softly  far  and  near. 

While  ring  the  chimes  across  the  gray  fog's  pall. 


Thrice  blessed  bell,  that,  to  time  insolent. 

Still  calls  afar  its  old  and  pious  song, 

Responding  faithfully  in  accents  strong, 
Like  some  old  sentinel  before  his  tent. 

I  too  —  my  soul  is  shattered;  —  when  at  times 
It  woiild  beguile  the  wintry  nights  with  rhymes 

Of  old,  its  weak  old  voice  at  moments  seems 
Like  gasps  some  poor,   forgotten  soldier  heaves 
Beside  the  blood-pools — 'neath  the  human  sheaves 

Gasping  in  anguish  toward  their  fixed  dreams. 

Translated  for  the  ^Library  of  the  World's  Best  Literature. > 


J 626  CHARLES   BAUDELAIRE 


The    two   poems   following   are    used   by   permission    of   the    J.    B.    Lippincott 

Company 


M^ 


THE    ENEMY 

YOUTH  swept  by  in  storm  and  cloudy  gloom, 
Lit  here  and  there  by  glimpses  of  the  sun; 
But  in  my  garden,   now  the  storm  is  done, 
Few  fruits  are  left  to  gather  purple  bloom. 


Here  have  I  touched  the  autumn  of  the  mind; 

And  now  the  careful  spade  to  labor  comes, 
Smoothing  the  earth  torn  by  the  waves  and  wind. 

Full  of  great  holes,  like  open  mouths  of  tombs. 

And  who  knows  if  the  flowers  whereof  I  dream 
Shall  find,  beneath  this  soil  washed  like  the  stream, 
The  force  that  bids  them  into  beauty  start  ? 

O  grief!     O  grief!     Time  eats  our  life  away. 
And  the  dark  Enemy  that  gnaws  our  heart 

Grows  with  the  ebbing  life-blood  of  his  prey! 

Translation  of  Miss  Katharine  Hi  Hard. 


B 


BEAUTY 

F.AUTiFUL  am  I  as  a  dream  in  stone ; 

And  for  my  breast,  where  each  falls  bruised  in  turn, 
The  poet  with  an  endless  love  must  yearn  — 

Endless  as  Matter,  silent  and  alone. 


A  sphinx  unguessed,   enthroned  in  azure  skies, 
White  as  the  swan,  my  heart  is  cold  as  snow; 
No  hated  motion  breaks  my  lines'  pure  flow, 

Nor  tears  nor  laughter  ever  dim  mine  eyes. 

Poets,  before  the  attitudes  sublime 

I  seem  to  steal  from  proudest  monuments. 

In  austere  studies  waste  the  ling'ring  time; 
For  I  possess,  to  charm  my  lover's  sight. 
Mirrors  wherein  all  things  are  fair  and  bright  — 
My  eyes,  my  large  eyes  of  eternal  light ! 

Translation  of  Miss  Katharine  Hillard. 


H 


CHARLES  BAUDELAIRE  1627 


DEATH 

o,  Death,  Boatman  Death,  it  is  time  we  set  sail; 
Up  anchor,  away  from  this  region  of  blight: 
Though  ocean  and  sky  are  like  ink  for  the  gale, 

Thou  knowest  our  hearts  are  consoled  with  the  light;. 


Thy  poison  pour  out  — it  will  comfort  us  well; 

Yea  —  for  the  fire  that  burns  in  our  brain 
We  would  plunge  through  the  depth,  be  it  heaven  or  hell, 

Through  the  fathomless  gulf  —  the  new  vision  to  gain. 

Translated  for  the  <  Library  of  the  World's  Best  Literature.' 


THE   PAINTER   OF   MODERN   LIFE 
From  <L'Art  Romantique> 

THE  crowd  is  his  domain,  as  the  air  is  that  of  the  bird  and 
the  water  that  of  the  fish.  His  passion  and  his  profession 
is  "  to  wed  the  crowd.  '*  For  the  perfect  flaneur,  for  the 
passionate  observer,  it  is  an  immense  pleasure  to  choose  his 
home  in  number,  change,  motion,  in  the  fleeting  and  the  infinite. 
To  be  away  from  one's  home  and  yet  to  be  always  at  home;  to 
be  in  the  midst  of  the  world,  to  see  it,  and  yet  to  be  hidden 
from  it;  such  are  some  of  the  least  pleasures  of  these  independ- 
ent, passionate,  impartial  minds  which  language  can  but  awk- 
wardly define.  The  observer  is  a  prince  who  everywhere  enjoys 
his  incognito.  The  amateur  of  life  makes  the  world  his  family, 
as  the  lover  of  the  fair  sex  makes  his  family  of  all  beauties, 
discovered,  discoverable,  and  indiscoverable,  as  the  lover  of  paint- 
ing lives  in  an  enchanted  dreamland  painted  on  canvas.  Thus 
the  man  who  is  in  love  with  all  life  goes  into  a  crowd  as  into 
an  immense  electric  battery.  One  might  also  compare  him  to  a 
mirror  as  immense  as  the  crowd;  to  a  conscious  kaleidoscope 
which  in  each  movement  represents  the  multiform  life  and  the 
moving  grace  of  all  life's  elements.  He  is  an  ego  insatiably 
hungry  for  the  non-ego,  every  moment  rendering  it  and  express- 
ing   it    in    images    more    vital    than    life    itself,    which    is    always 

unstable  and  fugitive.      ^*Any  man,'^  said  Mr.  G one  day,  in 

one  of  those   conversations  which  he   lights  up  with  intense  look 
and    vivid    gesture,    "any    man,    not    overcome    by   a    sorrow    so 


1628  CHARLES  BAUDELAIRE 

heavy  that  it  absorbs  all  the  faculties,  who  is  bored  in  the  midst 
of  a  crowd  is  a  fool,  a  fool,   and  I  despise  him." 

When  Mr.  G awakens  and  sees  the  blustering  sun  attack- 
ing the  window-panes,  he  says  with  remorse,  with  regret:  — 
"  What  imperial  order !  What  a  trumpet  flourish  of  light !  For 
hours  already  there  has  been  light  everywhere,  light  lost  by  my 
sleep!  How  many  lighted  objects  I  might  have  seen  and  have 
not  seen !  **  And  then  he  starts  off,  he  watches  in  its  flow  the 
river  of  vitality,  so  majestic  and  so  brilliant.  He  admires  the 
eternal  beauty  and  the  astonishing  harmony  of  life  in  great 
cities,  a  harmony  maintained  in  so  providential  a  way  in  the 
tumult  of  human  liberty.  He  contemplates  the  landscapes  of  the 
great  city,  landscapes  of  stone  caressed  by  the  mist  or  struck  by 
the  blows  of  the  sun.  He  enjoys  the  fine  carriages,  the  fiery 
horses,  the  shining  neatness  of  the  grooms,  the  dexterity  of  the 
valets,  the  walk  of  the  gliding  women,  of  the  beautiful  children, 
happy  that  they  are  alive  and  dressed;  in  a  word,  he  enjoys  the 
universal  life.  If  a  fashion,  the  cut  of  a  piece  of  clothing  has 
been  slightly  changed,  if  bunches  of  ribbon  or  buckles  have  been 
displaced  by  cockades,  if  the  bonnet  is  larger  and  the  back  hair 
a  notch  lower  on  the  neck,  if  the  waist  is  higher  and  the  skirt 
fuller,  be  sure  that  his  eagle  eye  will  see  it  at  an  enormous 
distance.  A  regiment  passes,  going  perhaps  to  the  end  of  the 
earth,  throwing    into    the    air    of    the    boulevards   the   flourish    of 

trumpets   compelling   and   light   as  hope;    the   eye  of   Mr.    G 

has  already  seen,  studied,  analyzed  the  arms,  the  gait,  the  physi- 
ognomy of  the  troop.  Trappings,  scintillations,  music,  firm  looks, 
heavy  and  serious  mustaches,  all  enters  pell-mell  into  him,  and 
in  a  few  moments  the  resulting  poem  will  be  virtually  composed. 
His  soul  is  alive  with  the  soul  of  this  regiment  which  is  march- 
ing like  a  single  animal,  the  proud  image  of  joy  in  obedience! 

But  evening  has  come.  It  is  the  strange,  uncertain  hour  at 
which  the  curtains  of  the  sky  are  drawn  and  the  cities  are  lighted. 
The  gas  throws  spots  on  the  purple  of  the  sunset.  Honest  or 
dishonest,  sane  or  mad,  men  say  to  themselves,  ^^At  last  the  day 
is  at  an  end !  **  The  wise  and  the  good-for-nothing  think  of 
pleasure,  and  each  hurries  to  the  place  of  his  choice  to  drink  the 

cup  of  pleasure.      Mr.   G will  be  the  last  to  leave  any  place 

where  the  light  may  blaze,  where  poetry  may  throb,  where  life 
may  tingle,  where  music  may  vibrate,  where  a  passion  may  strike 
an  attitude  for  his  eye,   where  the  man  of  nature  and  the  man 


CHARLES   BAUDELAIRE 


1629 


of  convention  show  themselves  in  a  strange  light,  where  the  sun 
lights  up  the  rapid  joys  of  fallen  creatures!  "A  day  well  spent, ^^ 
says  a  kind  of  reader  whom  we  all  know,  "  any  one  of  us  has 
genius  enough  to  spend  a  day  that  way."  No!  Few  men  are 
gifted  with  the  power  to  see;  still  fewer  have  the  power  of 
expression.  Now,  at  the  hour  when  others  are  asleep,  this  man 
is  bent  over  his  table,  darting  on  his  paper  the  same  look  which 
a  short  time  ago  he  was  casting  on  the  world,  battling  with  his 
pencil,  his  pen,  his  brush,  throwing  the  water  out  of  his  glass 
against  the  ceiling,  wiping  his  pen  on  his  shirt, — driven,  violent, 
active,  as  if  he  fears  that  his  images  will  escape  him,  a  quarreler 
although  alone,  —  a  cudgeler  of  himself.  And  the  things  he  has 
seen  are  born  again  upon  the  paper,  natural  and  more  than  nat- 
ural, beautiful  and  more  than  beautiful,  singular  and  endowed 
with  an  enthusiastic  life  like  the  soul  of  the  author.  The  phan- 
tasmagoria have  been  distilled  from  nature.  All  the  materials 
with  which  his  memory  is  crowded  become  classified,  orderly, 
harmonious,  and  undergo  that  compulsory  idealization  which  is 
the  result  of  a  childlike  perception,  that  is  to  say,  of  a  percep- 
tion that  is  keen,  magical  by  force  of  ingenuousness. 


MODERNNESS 

THUS  he  goes,  he  runs,  he  seeks.  What  does  he  seek?  Cer- 
tainly this  man,  such  as  I  have  portrayed  him,  this  soli- 
tary, gifted  with  an  active  imagination,  always  traveling 
through  the  great  desert  of  mankind,  has  a  higher  end  than  that 
of  a  mere  observer,  an  end  more  general  than  the  fugitive  pleas- 
ure of  the  passing  event.  He  seeks  this  thing  which  we  may 
call  modemness,  for  no  better  word  to  express  the  idea  pre- 
sents itself.  His  object  is  to  detach  from  fashion  whatever  it 
may  contain  of  the  poetry  in  history,  to  draw  the  eternal  from 
the  transitory.  If  we  glance  at  the  exhibitions  of  modern  pic- 
tures, we  are  struck  with  the  general  tendency  of  the  ■  artists  to 
dress  all  their  subjects  in  ancient  costumes.  That  is  obviously 
the  sign  of  great  laziness,  for  it  is  much  easier  to  declare  that 
everything  in  the  costume  of  a  certain  period  is  ugly  than  to 
undertake  the  work  of  extracting  from  it  the  mysterious  beauty 
which  may  be  contained  in  it,  however  slight  or  light  it  may  be. 
The   modern   is   the    transitory,   the   fleeting,   the   contingent,   the 


1630 


CHARLES   BAUDELAIRE 


half  of  art,  whose  other  half  is  the  unchanging  and  the  eternal. 
There  was  a  modernness  for  every  ancient  painter;  most  of  the 
beautiful  portraits  which  remain  to  us  from  earlier  times  are 
dressed  in  the  costumes  of  their  times.  They  are  perfectly  har- 
monious, because  the  costumes,  the  hair,  even  the  gesture,  the 
look  and  the  smile  (every  epoch  has  its  look  and  its  smile),  form 
a  whole  that  is  entirely  lifelike.  You  have  no  right  to  despise 
or  neglect  this  transitory,  fleeting  element,  of  which  the  changes 
are  so  frequent.  In  suppressing  it  you  fall  by  necessity  into  the 
void  of  an  abstract  and  undefinable  beauty,  like  that  of  the  only 
woman  before  the  fall.  If  instead  of  the  costume  of  the  epoch, 
which  is  a  necessary  element,  you  substitute  another,  you  create 
an  anomaly  which  can  have  no  excuse  unless  it  is  a  burlesque 
called  for  by  the  vogue  of  the  moment.  Thus,  the  goddesses, 
the  nymphs,  the  sultans  of  the  eighteenth  century  are  portraits 
morally  accurate. 


FROM    <LITTLE    POEMS    IN    PROSE  > 
Every  One  his  Own  Chimera 

UNDER  a  great  gray  sky,  in  a  great  powdery  plain  without 
roads,  without  grass,  without  a  thistle,  without  a  nettle,  I 
met  several  men  who  were  walking  with  heads  bowed 
down. 

Each  one  bore  upon  his  back  an  enormous  Chimera,  as  heavy 
as  a  bag  of  flour  or  coal,  or  the  accoutrements  of  a  Roman  sol- 
dier. 

But  the  monstrous  beast  was  not  an  inert  weight;  on  the  con- 
trary, it  enveloped  and  oppressed  the  man  with  its  elastic  and 
mighty  muscles;  it  fastened  with  its  two  vast  claws  to  the  breast 
of  the  bearer,  and  its  fabulous  head  surmounted  the  brow  of  the 
man,  like  one  of  those  horrible  helmets  by  which  the  ancient 
warriors  hoped  to  increase  the  terror  of  the  enemy. 

I  questioned  one  of  these  men,  and  I  asked  him  whither  they 
were  bound  thus.  He  answered  that  he  knew  not,  neither  he 
nor  the  others;  but  that  evidently  they  were  bound  somewhere, 
since  they  were  impelled  by  an  irresistible  desire  to  go  forwaid. 

It  is  curious  to  note  that  not  one  of  these  travelers  looked 
irritated  at  the  ferocious  beast  suspended  from  his  neck  and 
glued  against  his  back;  it  seemed  as  though  he  considered  it  as 


CHARLES  BAUDELAIRE  1631 

making"  part  of  himself.  None  cf  tnese  weary  and  serious  faces 
bore  witness  to  any  despair;  under  the  sullen  cupola  of  the  sky, 
their  feet  plunging-  into  the  dust  of  a  soil  as  desolate  as  that  sky, 
they  went  their  way  with  the  resigned  countenances  of  those  who 
have  condemned  themselves  to  hope  forever. 

The  procession  passed  by  me  and  sank  into  the  horizon's  atmo- 
sphere, where  the  rounded  surface  of  the  planet  slips  from  the 
curiosity  of  human  sight,  and  for  a  few  moments  I  obstinately 
persisted  in  wishing  to  fathom  the  mystery;  but  soon  an  irre- 
sistible indifference  fell  upon  me,  and  I  felt  more  heavily 
oppressed  by  it  than  even  they  were  by  their  crushing  Chimeras. 


Humanity 

At  the  feet  of  a  colossal  Venus,  one  of  those  artificial  fools, 
those  voluntary  buffoons  whose  duty  was  to  make  kings  laugh 
when  Remorse  or  Ennui  possessed  their  souls,  muffled  in  a  glaring 
ridiculous  costume,  crowned  with  horns  and  bells,  and  crouched 
against  the  pedestal,  raised  his  eyes  full  of  tears  toward  the  im- 
mortal goddess.  And  his  eyes  said :  —  <^  I  am  the  least  and  the 
most  solitary  of  human  beings,  deprived  of  love  and  of  friendship, 
and  therefore  far  below  the  most  imperfect  of  the  animals.  Never- 
theless, I  am  made,  even  I,  to  feel  and  comprehend  the  immortal 
Beauty!  Ah,  goddess  I  have  pity  on  my  sorrow  and  my  despair!** 
But  the  implacable  Venus  gazed  into  the  distance,  at  I  know  not 
what,  with  her  marble  eyes. 

Windows 

He  who  looks  from  without  through  an  open  window  never 
sees  as  many  things  as  he  who  looks  at  a  closed  window.  There 
is  no  object  more  profound,  more  mysterious,  more  rich,  more 
shadowy,  more  dazzling  than  a  window  lighted  by  a  candle. 
What  one  can  see  in  the  sunlight  is  always  less  interesting  than 
what  takes  place  behind  a  blind.  In  that  dark  or  luminous  hole 
life  lives,  dreams,   suffers. 

Over  the  sea  of  roofs  I  see  a  woman,  mature,  already  wrinkled, 
always  bent  over  something,  never  going  out.  From  her  clothes, 
her  movement,  from  almost  nothing,  I  have  reconstructed  the 
history  of  this  woman,  or  rather  her  legend,  and  sometimes  I  tell 
it  over  to  myself  in  tears. 


1632 


CHARLES   BAUDELAIRE 


If  it  had  been  a  poor  old  man  I  could  have  reconstructed  his 
story  as  easily. 

And  I  go  to  bed,  proud  of  having  lived  and  suffered  in  lives 
not  my  own. 

Perhaps  you  may  say,  **  Are  you  sure  that  this  story  is  the 
true  one  ?  **  What  difference  does  it  make  what  is  the  reality  out- 
side of  me,  if  it  has  helped  me  to  live,  to  know  who  I  ain  and 
what  I  am  ? 

Drink 

One  should  be  always  drunk.  That  is  all,  the  whole  question. 
In  order  not  to  feel  the  horrible  burden  of  Time,  which  is  break- 
ing your  shoulders  and  bearing  you  to  earth,  you  must  be  drunk 
without  cease. 

But  drunk  on  what  ?  On  wine,  poetry,  or  virtue,  as  you 
choose.     But  get  drunk. 

And  if  sometimes,  on  the  steps  of  a  palace,  on  the  green  grass 
of  a  moat,  in  the  dull  solitude  of  your  chamber,  you  awake  with 
your  intoxication  already  lessened  or  gone,  ask  of  the  wind,  the 
wave,  the  star,  the  clock,  of  everything  that  flies,  sobs,  rolls,  sings, 
talks,  what  is  the  hour  ?  and  the  wind,  the  wave,  the  star,  the 
bird,  the  clock  will  answer,  ^^  It  is  the  hour  to  get  drunk !  ^^  Not 
to  be  the  martyred  slave  of  Time,  get  drunk;  get  drunk  unceas- 
ingly.    Wine,  poetry,  or  virtue,  as  you  choose. 

FROM   A  JOURNAL 

I  SWEAR  to  myself  henceforth  to  adopt  the  following  rules  as  the 
everlasting  rules  of  my  life.  .  .  .  To  pray  every  morning 
to  God,  the  Foiintain  of  all  strength  and  of  all  justice;  to  my 
father,  to  Mariette,  and  to  Poe.  To  pray  to  them  to  give  me 
necessary  strength  to  accomplish  all  my  tasks,  and  to  grant  my 
mother  a  life  long  enough  to  enjoy  my  reformation.  To  work 
all  day,  or  at  least  as  long  as  my  strength  lasts.  To  trust  to 
God  —  that  is  to  say,  to  Justice  itself  —  for  the  success  of  my 
projects.  To  pray  again  every  evening  to  God  to  ask  Him  for 
life  and  strength,  for  my  mother  and  myself.  To  divide  all  my 
earnings  into  four  parts  —  one  for  my  daily  expenses,  one  for  my 
creditors,  one  for  my  friends,  and  one  for  my  mother.  To  keep 
to  principles  of  strict  sobriety,  and  to  banish  all  and  every  stim- 
ulant. 


i633 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD 

(1804-1881) 

BY  ISA  CARRINGTON  CABELL 

.ENJAMIN  Disraeli,  Earl  of  Beaconsfield,  born  in  London,  De- 
cember, 1804;  died  there  April  19th,  1881.  His  paternal 
ancestors  were  of  the  house  of  Lara,  and  held  high  rank 
among  Hebrew-Spanish  nobles  till  the  tribunal  of  Torquemada  drove 
them  from  Spain  to  Venice.  There,  proud  of  their  race  and  origin, 
they  styled  themselves  **  Sons  of  Israel,'^  and  became  merchant 
princes.  But  the  city's  commerce  failing,  the  grandfather  of  Benjamin 
Disraeli  removed  to  London  with  a  diminished  but  comfortable  for- 
tune. His  son,  Isaac  Disraeli,  was  a  well- 
known  literary  man,  and  the  author  of 
'The  Curiosities  of  Literature. >  On  ac- 
count of  the  political  and  social  ostracism 
of  the  Jews  in  England,  he  had  all  his 
family  baptized  into  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land- but  with  Benjamin  Disraeli  espe- 
cially, Christianity  was  never  more  than 
Judaism  developed.  His  belief  and  his 
affections  were  in  his  own  race. 

Benjamin,  like  most  Jewish  youths, 
was  educated  in  private  schools,  and  at 
seventeen  entered  a  solicitor's  office.  At 
twenty-two  he  published  '  Vivian  Grey  * 
(London,  1826),  which  readable  and  amus- 
ing take-off  of  London  society  gave  him  great  and  instantaneous  noto- 
riety. Its  minute  descriptions  of  the  great  world,  its  caricatures  of 
well-known  social  and  political  personages,  its  magnificent  diction, 
— too  magnificent  to  be  taken  quite  seriously, — excited  inquiry;  and 
the  great  world  was  amazed  to  discover  that  the  impertinent  observer 
was  not  one  of  themselves,  but  a  boy  in  a  lawyer's  office.  To  add 
to  the  audacity,  he  had  conceived  himself  the  hero  of  these  diverting 
situations,  and  by  his  cleverness  had  outwitted  age,  beauty,  rank, 
diplomacy  itself. 

Statesmen,  poets,  fine  ladies,   were  all  genuinely  amused;   and  the 
author   bade   fair   to   become    a  lion,   when  he  fell  ill,  and  was  com- 
pelled to  leave  England  for  a  year  or  more,  which  he  spent  in  travel 
on  the  Continent  and  in  Egypt,   Nubia,   and  Palestine.      His  visit  to 
III— 103 


Lord  Beaconsfield 


i634 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD 


the  birthplace  of  his  race  made  an  impression  on  him  that  lasted 
through  his  life  and  literature.  It  is  embodied  in  his  <  Letters  to  His 
Sister*  (London,  1843),  ^^id  the  autobiographical  novel  ^Contarini 
Fleming  >  (1833),  in  which  he  turned  his  adventures  into  fervid 
English,  at  a  guinea  a  volume.  But  although  the  spirit  of  poesy,  in 
the  form  of  a  Childe  Harold,  stalks  rampant  through  the  romance, 
there  is  both  feeling  and  fidelity  to  nature  whenever  he  describes 
the  Orient  and  its  people.  Then  the  bizarre,  brilliant  poseur  forgets 
his  role,   and  reveals  his  highest  aspirations. 

When  Disraeli  returned  to  London  he  became  the  fashion.  Every- 
bodv,  from  the  prime  minister  to  Count  D'Orsay,  had  read  his  clever 
novels.  The  poets  praised  them,  Lady  Blessington  invited  him  to 
dine.   Sir  Robert  Peel  was  "most  gracious.** 

But  literary  success  could  never  satisfy  Disraeli's  ambition :  a  seat 
in  Parliament  was  at  the  end  of  his  rainbow.  He  professed  himself 
a  radical,  but  he  was  a  radical  in  his  own  sense  of  the  term;  and 
like  his  own  Sidonia,  half  foreigner,  half  looker-on,  he  felt  himself 
endowed  with  an  insight  only  possible  to  an  outsider,  an  observer 
without  inherited  prepossessioJis. 

Several  contemporary  sketches  of  Disraeli  at  this  time  have  been 
preserved.  His  dress  was  purposed  affectation;  it  led  the  beholder 
to  look  for  folly  only:  and  when  the  brilliant  flash  came,  it  was  the 
more  startling  as  unexpected  from  such  a  figure.  Lady  Duflferin  told 
Mr.  Motley  that  when  she  met  Disraeli  at  dinner,  he  wore  a  black- 
velvet  coat  lined  with  satin,  purple  trousers  with  a  gold  band  running 
down  the  outside  seam,  a  scarlet  waistcoat,  long  lace  ruffles  falling 
down  to  the  tips  of  his  fingers,  white  gloves  with  several  rings  out- 
side, and  long  black  ringlets  rippling  down  his  shoulders.  She  told 
him  he  had  made  a  fool  of  himself  by  appearing  in  such  a  dress,  but 
she  did  not  guess  why  it  had  been  adopted.  Another  contemporary 
says  of  him,  <<  When  duly  excited,  his  command  of  language  was 
wonderful,  his  power  of  sarcasm  unstirpassed.** 

He  was  busy  making  speeches  and  writing  political  squibs  for  the 
next  two  years;  for  Parliament  was  before  his  eyes.  "He  knew,** 
says  Froude,  "he  had  a  devil  of  a  tongue,  and  was  unincumbered  by 
the  foolish  form  of  vanity  called  modesty.**  <Ixion  in  Heaven,*  <The 
Infernal  Marriage,*  and  <  Popanilla  *  were  attempts  to  rival  both 
Lucian  and  Swift  on  their  own  ground.  It  is  doubtful,  however, 
whether  he  would  have  risked  writing  ^Henrietta  Temple*  (1837)  and 
<Venetia*  (1837),  two  ardent  love  stories,  had  he  not  been  in  debt; 
for  notoriety  as  a  novelist  is  not  always  a  recommendation  to  a  con- 
stituency. 

In  <  Henrietta  *  he  found  an  opportunity  to  write  the  biography  of 
a  lover  oppressed  by  duns.     It  is  a  most  entertaining  novel  even  to 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD  I  63  5 

a  reader  who  does  not  read  for  a  new  light  on  the  great  statesman, 
and  is  remarkable  as  the  beginning  of  what  is  now  known  as  the 
« natural*^  manner;  a  revolt,  his  admirers  tell  us,  from  the  stilted 
fashion  of  making  love  that  then  prevailed  in  novels. 

<Venetia>  is  founded  on  the  characters  of  Byron  and  Shelley,  and 
is  amusing  reading.  The  high-flown  language  incrusted  with  the 
gems  of  rhetoric  excites  our  risibilities,  but  it  is  not  safe  to  laugh  at 
Disraeli;  in  his  most  diverting  aspects  he  has  a  deep  sense  of  humor, 
and  he  who  would  mock  at  him  is  apt  to  get  a  whip  across  the  face 
at  an  unguarded  moment.  Disraeli  laughs  in  his  sleeve  at  many  things, 
but  first  of  all  at  the  reader. 

He  failed  in  his  canvass  for  his  seat  at  High  Wycombe,  but  he 
turned  his  failure  to  good  account,  and  established  a  reputation  for 
pluck  and  influence.  <*  A  mighty  independent  personage,  ^^  observed 
Charles  Greville,  and  his  famous  quarrel  with  O'Connell  did  him  so 
little  harm  that  in  1837  he  was  returned  for  Maidstone.  His  first 
speech  was  a  failure.  The  word  had  gone  out  that  he  was  to  be  put 
down.  At  last,  finding  it  useless  to  persist,  he  said  he  was  not  sur- 
prised at  the  reception  he  had  experienced.  He  had  begun  several 
things  many  times  and  had  succeeded  at  last.  Then  pausing,  and 
looking  indignantly  across  the  house,  he  exclaimed  in  a  loud  and 
remarkable  tone,  "I  will  sit  down  now,  but  the  time  will  come  when 
you  will  hear  me.** 

He  married  the  widow  of  his  patron,  Wyndham  Lewis,  in  1838. 
This  put  him  in  possession  of  a  fortune,  and  gave  him  the  power  to 
continue  his  political  career.  His  radicalism  was  a  thing  of  the  past. 
He  had  drifted  from  Conservatism,  with  Peel  for  a  leader,  to  aristo- 
cratic socialism;  and  in  1844,  1845,  and  1847  appeared  the  Trilogy,  as 
he  styled  the  novels  ^Coningsby,*  <Tancred,*  and  ^  Sibyl.*  Of  the 
three,  ^  Coningsby  *  will  prove  the  most  entertaining  to  the  modern 
reader.  The  hero  is  a  gentleman,  and  in  this  respect  is  an  improve- 
ment on  Vivian  Grey,  for  his  audacity  is  tempered  by  good  breeding. 
The  plot  is  slight,  but  the  scenes  are  entertaining.  The  famous 
Sidonia,  the  Jew  financier,  is  a  favorite  with  the  author,  and  betrays 
his  affection  and  respect  for  race.  Lord  Monmouth,  the  wild  peer,  is 
a  rival  of  the  "Marquis  of  Steyne,**  and  worthy  of  a  place  in  *  Vanity 
Fair  * ;  the  political  intriguers  are  photographed  from  life,  the  pictures 
of  fashionable  London  tickle  both  the  vanity  and  the  fancy  of  the 
reader. 

^  Sibyl  *  is  too  clearly  a  novel  with  a  motive  to  give  so  much 
pleasure.  It  is  a  study  of  the  contrasts  between  the  lives  of  the  very 
rich  and  the  hopelessly  poor,  and  an  attempt  to  show  the  superior 
condition  of  the  latter  when  the  Catholic  Church  was  all-powerful  in 
England  and  the  king  an  absolute  monarch. 


1636  LORD   BEACONSFIELD 

*Tancred*  was  composed  when  Disraeli  was  tinder  <*the  illusion  of 
a  possibly  regenerated  aristocracy."  He  sends  Tancred,.  the  hero,  the 
heir  of  a  dtical  house,  to  Palestine  to  find  the  inspiration  to  a  true 
religious  belief,  and  details  his  adventures  with  a  power  of  sarcasm 
that  is  seldom  equaled.  In  certain  scenes  in  this  novel  the  author 
rises  from  a  mere  mocker  to  a  genuine  satirist.  Tancred's  interview 
with  the  bishop,  in  which  he  takes  that  dignitary's  religious  tenets 
seriously;  that  with  Lady  Constance,  when  she  explains  the  **  Mystery 
of  Chaos  '*  and  shows  how  "  the  stars  are  formed  out  of  the  cream  of 
the  Milky  Way,  a  sort  of  celestial  cheese  chiirned  into  light";  the 
vision  of  the  angels  on  Mt.  Sinai,  and  the  celestial  Sidonia  who  talks 
about  the  ^'Sublime  and  Solacing  Doctrine  of  Theocratic  Equality,"  — 
all  these  are  passages  where  we  wonder  whether  the  author  sneered 
or  blushed  when  he  wrote.  Certainly  what  has  since  been  known  as 
the  Disraelian  irony  stings  as  we  turn  each  page. 

Meanwhile  Disraeli  had  become  a  power  in  Parliament,  and  the 
bitter  opponent  of  Peel,  under  whom  Catholic  emancipation,  parlia- 
mentary reform,  and  the  abrogation  of  the  commercial  system,  had 
been  carried  without  conditions  and  almost  without  mitigations. 

Disraeli's  assaults  on  his  leader  delighted  the  Liberals;  the  coun- 
try members  felt  indignant  satisfaction  at  the  deserved  chastisement 
of  their  betrayer.  With  malicious  skill,  Disraeli  touched  one  after 
another  the  weak  points  in  a  character  that  was  superficially  vulner- 
able. Finally  the  point  before  the  House  became  Peel's  general 
conduct.  He  was  beaten  by  an  overwhelming  majority,  and  to  the 
hand  that  dethroned  him  descended  the  task  of  building  up  the  ruins 
of  the  Conservative  party.  Disraeli's  best  friends  felt  this  a  welcome 
necessity.  There  is  no  example  of  a  rise  so  svidden  under  such  con- 
ditions. His  politics  were  as  much  distrusted  as  his  serious  literary 
passages.  But  Disraeli  was  the  single  person  equal  to  the  task.  For 
the  next  twenty-five  years  he  led  the  Conservative  opposition  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  varied  by  short  intervals  of  power.  He  was 
three  times  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  1853,  1858,  and  1859;  and 
on  Lord  Derby's  retirement  in  1868  he  became  Prime  Minister. 

In  1870,  having  laid  aside  novel-writing  for  twenty  years,  he  pub- 
lished ^Lothair.^  It  is  a  politico-religious  romance  aimed  at  the 
Jesuits,  the  Fenians,  and  the  Communists.  It  had  an  instantaneous 
success,  for  its  author  was  the  most  conspicuous  figure  in  Europe,  but 
its  popularity  is  also  due  to  its  own  merits.  We  are  all  of  us  snobs 
after  a  fashion  and  love  high  society.  The  glory  of  entering  the 
splendid  portals  of  the  real  English  dukes  and  duchesses  seems  to  be 
ours  when  Disraeli  throws  open  the  magic  door  and  ushers  the 
reader  in.  The  decorations  do  not  seem  tawdry,  nor  the  tinsel  other 
than    real.       We    move    with    pleasurable    excitement    with    Lothair 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD 


1637 


from  palace  to  castle,  and  thence  to  battle-field  and  scenes  of  dark 
intrigue.  The  hint  of  the  love  affair  with  the  Olympian  Theodora 
appeals  to  our  romance;  the  circumventing  of  the  wily  Cardinal  and 
his  accomplices  is  agreeable  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  Protestant  mind; 
their  discomfiture,  and  the  crowning  of  virtue  in  the  shape  of  a  res- 
cued Lothair  married  to  the  English  Duke's  daughter  with  the  fixed 
Church  of  England  views,  is  what  the  reader  expects  and  prays  for, 
and  is  the  last  privilege  of  the  real  story-teller.  That  the  author  has 
thrown  aside  his  proclivities  for  Romanism  as  he  showed  them  in 
^  Sibyl,  ^  no  more  disturbs  us  than  the  eccentricities  of  his  politics. 
We  do  not  quite  give  him  our  faith  when  he  is  most  in  earnest, 
talking  Semitic  Arianism  on  Mt.   Sinai. 

A  peerage  was  offered  to  him  in  1868.  He  refused  it  for  himself, 
but  asked  Queen  Victoria  to  grant  the  honor  to  his  wife,  who 
became  the  Countess  of  Beaconsfield.  But  in  1876  he  accepted  the 
title  of  Earl  of  Beaconsfield.  His  political  career  is  fully  recounted  in 
the  monumental  biography  by  Monypenny  and  Buckle. 

His  last  novel,  ^Endymion,^  was  written  for  the  ^10,000  its  pub- 
lishers paid  for  it.  It  adds  nothing  to  his  fame,  but  is  an  agreeable 
picture  of  fashionable  London  life  and  the  struggles  of  a  youth  to 
gain  power  and  place. 

Lord  Beaconsfield  put  more  dukes,  earls,  lords  and  ladies,  more 
gold  and  jewels,  more  splendor  and  wealth  into  his  books  than  any 
one  else  ever  tried  to  do.  But  beside  his  Oriental  delight  in  the  dis- 
play of  luxury,  it  is  interesting  to  see  the  effect  of  that  Orientalism 
when  he  describes  the  people  from  whom  he  sprang.  His  rare  ten- 
derness and  genuine  respect  are  for  those  of  the  race  <^  that  is  the 
aristocracy  of  nature,  the  purest  race,  the  chosen  people.'*  He  sends 
all  his  heroes  to  Palestine  for  inspiration;  wisdom  dwells  in  her 
gates.  Another  aristocracy,  that  of  talent,  he  recognizes  and  ap- 
plauds.    No  dullard  ever  succeeds,  no  genius  goes  unrewarded. 

It  is  the  part  of  the  story-teller  to  make  his  story  a  probable  one 
to  the  listener,  no  matter  how  impossible  both  character  and  situa- 
tion. Disraeli  was  accredited  with  the  faculty  of  persuading  him- 
self to  believe  or  disbelieve  whatever  he  liked;  and  did  he  pos- 
sess the  game  power  over  his  readers,  these  entertaining  volumes 
would  lift  him  to  the  highest  rank  the  novelist  attains.  As  it  is,  he 
does  not  quite  succeed  in  creating  an  illusion,  and  we  are  conscious 
of  two  lobes  in  the  author's  brain;  in  one  sits  a  sentimentalist,  in 
the  other  a  mocking  devil. 


1638  LORD  BEACONSFIELD 

A  DAY  AT  EMS 

From  <  Vivian  Grey> 

«  T  THINK  we'd  better  take  a  little  coffee  now;  and  then,  if  you 
I  like,  we'll  just  stroll  into  the  Redoute'*  [continued  Baron 
de  Konigstein]. 
In  a  brilliantly  illuminated  saloon,  adorned  with  Corinthian 
columns,  and  casts  from  some  of  the  most  famous  antiqiie  statues, 
assembled  between  nine  and  ten  o'clock  in  the  evening  many  of 
the  visitors  at  Ems.  On  each  side  of  the  room  was  placed  a  long, 
narrow  table,  one  of  which  was  covered  with  green  baize,  and 
unattended,  while  the  variously  colored  leather  surface  of  the 
other  was  very  closely  surrounded  by  an  interested  crowd. 
Behind  this  table  stood  two  individuals  of  very  different  appear- 
ance. The  first  was  a  short,  thick  man,  whose  only  business  was 
dealing  certain  portions  of  playing  cards  with  quick  succession, 
one  after  the  other;  and  as  the  fate  of  the  table  was  decided  by 
this  process,  did  his  companion,  an  extremely  tall,  thin  man, 
throw  various  pieces  of  money  upon  certain  stakes,  which  were 
deposited  by  the  bystanders  on  different  parts  of  the  table;  or, 
which  was  more  often  the  case,  with  a  silver  rake  with  a  long 
ebony  handle,  sweep  into  a  large  inclosure  near  him  the  scat- 
tered sums.  This  inclosure  was  called  the  bank,  and  the  myste- 
rious ceremony  in  which  these  persons  were  assisting  was  the 
celebrated  game  of  rougc-ct-noir.  A  deep  silence  was  strictly 
observed  by  those  who  immediately  surrounded  the  table;  no 
voice  was  heard  save  that  of  the  little,  short,  stout  dealer,  when, 
without  an  expression  of  the  least  interest,  he  seemed  mechani- 
cally to  announce  the  fate  of  the  different  colors.  No  other 
sound  was  heard  save  the  jingle  of  the  dollars  and  napoleons, 
and  the  ominous  rake  of  the  tall,  thin  banker.  The  countenances 
of  those  who  were  hazarding  their  money  were  grave  and  gloomy; 
their  eyes  were  fixed,  their  brows  contracted,  and  their  lips  pro- 
jected; and  yet  there  was  an  evident  effort  visible  to  show  that 
they  were  both  easy  and  unconcerned.  Each  player  held  in  his 
hand  a  small  piece  of  pasteboard,  on  which,  with  a  steel  pricker, 
he  marked  the  run  of  the  cards,  in  order,  from  his  observations, 
to  regulate  his  own  play:  the  rouge-et-^ioir  player  imagines  thai 
chance  is  not  capricious.  Those  who  were  not  interested  in  the 
game   promenaded   in   two  lines  within   the   tables;    or^  seated  in 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD 


1639 


recesses  between  the  pillars,  formed  small  parties  for  conversa- 
tion. 

As  Vivian  and  the  baron  entered,  Lady  Madeleine  Trevor, 
leaning-  on  the  arm  of  an  elderly  man,  left  the  room;  but  as  she 
was  in  earnest  conversation,  she  did  not  observe  them. 

*  I  suppose  we  must  throw  away  a  dollar  or  two,  Grey  !  '^  said 
the  baron,  as  he  walked  up  to  the  table. 

"  My  dear  De  Konigstein  —  one  pinch  —  one  pinch !  '* 

"  Ah !  marquis,  what  fortune  to-night  ?  " 

**  Bad  —  bad!  I  have  lost  my  napoleon:  I  never  risk  further. 
There's  that  cursed  crusty  old  De  Trumpetson,  persisting,  as 
usual,  in  his  run  of  bad  luck,  because  he  will  never  give  in. 
Trust  me,  my  dear  De  Konigstein,  it'll  end  in  his  ruin;  and 
then,  if  there's  a  sale  of  his  effects,  I  shall  perhaps  get  the 
snuff-box  —  a-a-h !  '* 

"  Come,  Grey ;  shall  I  throw  down  a  couple  of  napoleons  on 
joint  account?  I  don't  care  much  for  play  myself;  but  I  sup- 
pose at  Ems  we  must  make  up  our  minds  to  lose  a  few  louis. 
Here !  now  for  the  red  —  joint  account,  mind !  *^ 

«Done.» 

*^  There's  the  archduke!  Let  us  go  and  make  our  bow;  we 
needn't  stick  at  the  table  as  if  our  whole  soul  were  staked  with 
our  crown  pieces  —  we'll  make  our  bow,  and  then  return  in  time 
to  know  our  fate.  ^*  So  saying,  the  gentlemen  walked  up  to  the 
top  of  the  room. 

"Why,  Grey!  —  surely  no  —  it  cannot  be  —  and  yet  it  is.  De 
Boeffleurs,  how  d'ye  do  ?  ^^  said  the  baron,  with  a  face  beaming 
with  joy,  and  a  hearty  shake  of  the  hand.  "  My  dear,  dear 
fellow,  how  the  devil  did  you  manage  to  get  off  so  soon  ?  I 
thought  you  were  not  to  be  here  for  a  fortnight:  we  only 
arrived  ourselves  to-day." 

"Yes  —  but  I've  made  an  arrangement  which  I  did  not  antici- 
pate; and  so  I  posted  after  you  immediately.  Whom  do  you 
think  I  have  brought  with  me  ? " 

«  Who  ? » 

"  Salvinski.  *^ 

«  Ah !     And  the  count  ?  " 

"  Follows  immediately.  I  expect  him  to-morrow  or  next  day. 
Salvinski  is  talking  to  the  archduke ;  and  see,  he  beckons  to  me. 
I  suppose  I  am  going  to  be  presented." 

The  chevalier  moved  forward,  followed  by  the  baron  and 
Vivian. 


1640 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD 


**  Any  friend  of  Prince  Salvinski  I  shall  always  have  great 
pleasure  in  having  presented  to  me.  Chevalier,  I  feel  great 
pleasure  in  having  you  presented  to  me !  Chevalier,  you  ought 
to  be  proud  of  the  name  of  Frenchman.  Chevalier,  the  French 
are  a  grand  nation.  Chevalier,  I  have  the  highest  respect  for 
the  French  nation." 

"The  most  subtle  diplomatist,*^  thought  Vivian,  as  he  recalled 
to  mind  his  own  introduction,  "  would  be  puzzled  to  decide  to 
which  interest  his  imperial  highness  leans.'* 

The  archduke  now  entered  into  conversation  with  the  prince, 
and  most  of  the  circle  who  surrounded  him.  As  his  highness 
was  addressing  Vivian,  the  baron  let  slip  our  hero's  arm,  and 
seizing  hold  of  the  Chevalier  de  Boeffleurs,  began  walking  up 
and  down  the  room  with  him,  and  was  soon  engaged  in  very 
anmiated  conversation.  In  a  few  minutes  the  archduke,  bowing 
to  his  circle,  made  a  move  and  regained  the  side  of  a  Saxon 
lady,  from  whose  interesting  company  he  had  been  disturbed 
by  the  arrival  of  Prince  Salvinski  —  an  individual  of  whose  long 
stories  and  dull  romances  the  archduke  had,  from  experience, 
a  particular  dread;  but  his  highness  was  always  very  courteous 
to  the  Poles. 

"Grey,  I've  dispatched  De  Boeffleurs  to  the  house  to  instruct 
the  servant  and  Ernstorff  to  do  the  impossible,  in  order  that 
our  rooms  may  be  all  together.  You'll  be  delighted  with  De 
Boeffleurs  when  you  know  him,  and  I  expect  you  to  be  great 
^riends.  Oh!  by  the  by,  his  unexpected  arrival  has  quite  made 
us  forget  our  venture  at  rouge-et-noir.  Of  course  we're  too  late 
now  for  anything;  even  if  we  had  been  fortunate,  our  doubled 
stake,  remaining  on  the  table,  is  of  course  lost;  we  may  as 
well,  however,  walk  up.**  So  saying,  the  baron  reached  the 
table. 

"That  is  your  excellency's  stake! — that  is  your  excellency's 
stake !  **   exclaimed  many  voices  as  he  came  up. 

"What's  the  matter,  my  friends?  what's  the  matter?**  asked 
the  baron,  very  calmly. 

"There's  been  a  run  on  the  red!  there's  been  a  run  on  the 
red!  and  your  excellency's  stake  has  doubled  each  time.  It  has 
been  4  —  8 — 16  —  32  —  64 — 128  —  256;  and  now  it's  512!**  quickly 
rattled  a  little  thin  man  in  spectacles,  pointing  at  the  same  time 
to  his  unparalleled  line  of  punctures.  This  was  one  of  those 
officious,  noisy  little  men,  who  are  always  ready  to  give  you 
unasked    information    on    every    possible    subject,    and    who   are 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD  1641 

never  so  happy  as  when  they  are  watching  over  the  interest  of 
some  stranger,  who  never  thanks  them  for  their  unnecessary 
solicitude. 

Vivian,  in  spite  of  his  philosophy,  felt  the  excitement  and 
wonder  of  the  moment.  He  looked  very  earnestly  at  the  baron, 
whose  countenance,  however,  remained  perfectly  unmoved. 

"Grey,*  said  he,   very  coolly,   **  it  seems  we're  in  luck." 

**The  stake's  then  not  all  your  own?'^  very  eagerly  asked  the 
little  man  in  spectacles. 

"No,  part  of  it' is  yours,  sir,*  answered  the  baron,  very  dryly. 

"I'm  going  to  deal,*  said  the  short,  thick  man  behind.  "Is  the 
board  cleared  ?  * 

"  Your  excellency  then  allows  the  stake  to  remain  ?  *  inquired 
the  tall,   thin  banker,   with  affected  nonchalance. 

"Oh!  certainlv, *  said  the  baron,   with  real  nonchalance. 

"  Three  —  eight  —  fourteen  —  twenty-four  —  thirty-four.    Rouge 

All  crowded  nearer;  the  table  was  surrounded  five  or  six 
deep,  for  the  wonderful  run  of  luck  had  got  wind,  and  nearly  the 
whole  room  were  round  the  table.  Indeed,  the  archduke  and 
Saxon  lady,  and  of  course  the  silent  suite,  were  left  alone  at  the 
upper  part  of  the  room.  The  tall  banker  did  not  conceal  his 
agitation.  Even  the  short,  stout  dealer  ceased  to  be  a  machine. 
All  looked  anxious  except  the  baron.  Vivian  looked  at  the  table; 
his  excellency  watched,  with  a  keen  eye,  the  little  dealer.  No 
one  even  breathed  as  the  cards  descended.  "  Ten  —  twenty  —  * 
here  the  countenance  of  the  banker  brightened  —  "  twenty-two  — 
twenty-five  —  twenty-eight  —  thirty-one  —  Noir  31.  The  bank's 
broke;  no  more  play  to-night.  The  roulette  table  opens  imme- 
diately. * 

In  spite  of  the  great  interest  which  had  been  excited,  nearly 
the  whole  crowd,  without  waiting  to  congratulate  the  baron, 
rushed  to  the  opposite  side  of  the  room  in  order  to  secure  places 
at  the  roulette  table. 

"Put  these  five  hundred  and  twelve  Napoleons  into  a  bag,* 
said  the  baron;  "Grey,  this  is  your  share,  and  I  congratulate 
you.  With  regard  to  the  other  half,  Mr.  Hermann,  what  bills 
have  you  got  ?  * 

"Two  on  Gogel's  house  of  Frankfort  —  accepted  of  course  — 
for  two  hundred  and  fifty  each,  and  these  twelve  napoleons  will 
make  it  right,*   said  the  tall  banker,   as  he  opened  a  large  black 


1642 


LORD  BEACONSFIELD 


pocket-book,  from  which  he  took  out  two  small  bits  of  paper. 
The  baron  examined  them,  and  after  having  seen  them  indorsed, 
put  them  calmly  into  his  pocket,  not  forgetting  the  twelve  napo- 
leons; and  then  taking  Vivian's  arm,  and  regretting  extremely 
that  he  should  have  the  trouble  of  carrying  such  a  weight,  he 
wished  Mr.  Hermann  a  very  good-night  and  success  at  his  rou- 
lette, and  walked  with  his  companion  quietly  home.  Thus  passed 
a  day  at  Ems! 


THE   FESTA   IN   THE   «ALHAMBRA)) 
From   <  The   Young  Duke  > 

YOU  entered  the  Alhambra  by  a  Saracenic  cloister,  from  the 
ceiling  of  which  an  occasional  lamp  threw  a  gleam  upon 
some  Eastern  arms  hung  up  against  the  wall.  This  passage 
led  to  the  armory,  a  room  of  moderate  dimensions,  but  hung  with 
rich  contents.  Many  an  inlaid  breastplate  —  many  a  Mameluke 
scimitar  and  Damascus  blade  —  many  a  gemmed  pistol  and  pearl- 
tmbroided  saddle  might  there  be  seen,  though  viewed  in  a  sub- 
dued and  quiet  light.  All  seemed  hushed  and  still,  and  shrouded 
in  what  had  the  reputation  of  being  a  palace  of  pleasure. 

In  this  chamber  assembled  the  expected  guests.  His  Grace 
and  the  Bird  of  Paradise  arrived  first,  with  their  foreign  friends. 
Lord  Squib  and  Lord  Darrell,  Sir  Lucius  Grafton,  Mr.  Annesley, 
and  Mr.  Peacock  Piggott  followed,  but  not  alone.  There  were 
two  ladies  who,  by  courtesy  if  no  other  right,  bore  the  titles  of 
Lady  Squib  and  Mrs.  Annesley.  There  was  also  a  pseudo  Lady 
Aphrodite  Grafton.  There  was  Mrs.  Montfort,  the  famous  blonde^ 
of  a  beauty  which  was  quite  ravishing,  and  dignified  as  beautiful. 
Some  said  (but  really  people  say  such  things)  that  there  was  a 
talk  (I  never  believe  anything  I  hear)  that  had  not  the  Bird  of 
Paradise  flown  in  (these  foreigners  pick  up  everything),  Mrs. 
Montfort  would  have  been  the  Duchess  of  St.  James.  How  this 
may  be  I  know  not;  certain,  however,  this  superb  and  stately 
donna  did  not  openly  evince  any  spleen  at .  her  more  fortunate 
rival.  Although  she  found  herself  a  guest  at  the  Alhambra 
instead  of  being  the  mistress  of  the  palace,  probably,  like  many 
other  ladies,  she  looked  upon  this  affair  of  the  singing-bird  as  a 
freak  that  must  end  —  and  then  perhaps  his  Grace,  who  was  a 
charming   young   man,    would   return   to   his    senses.     There   also 


LORD  BEACONSFIELD 


1643 


was  her  sister,  a  long-,  fair  girl,  who  looked  sentimental,  but 
was  only  silly.  There  was  a  little  French  actress,  like  a  highly 
finished  miniature;  and  a  Spanish  danseuse^  tall,  dusky,  and  lithe, 
glancing  like  a  lynx,  and  graceful  as  a  jennet. 

Having  all  arrived,  they  proceeded  down  a  small  gallery  to 
the  banqueting-room.  The  doors  were  thrown  open.  Pardon  me 
if  for  a  moment  I  do  not  describe  the  chamber;  but  really,  the 
blaze  affects  my  sight.  The  room  was  large  and  lofty.  It  was 
fitted  up  as  an  Eastern  tent.  The  walls  were  hung  with  scarlet 
cloth  tied  up  with  ropes  of  gold.  Round  the  room  crouched 
recumbent  lions  richly  gilt,  who  grasped  in  their  paw  a  lance, 
the  top  of  which  was  a  colored  lamp.  The  ceiling  was  embla- 
zoned with  the  Hauteville  arms,  and  was  radiant  with  burnished 
gold.  A  cresset  lamp  was  suspended  from  the  centre  of  the 
shield,  and  not  only  emitted  an  equable  flow  of  soft  though 
brilliant  light,  but  also,  as  the  aromatic  oil  wasted  away,  distilled 
an  exquisite  perfume. 

The  table  blazed  with  golden  plate,  for  the  Bird  of  Paradise 
loved  splendor.  At  the  end  of  the  room,  under  a  canopy  and 
upon  a  throne,  the  shield  and  vases  lately  executed  for  his  Grace 
now  appeared.  Everything  was  gorgeous,  costly,  and  imposing; 
but  there  was  no  pretense,  save  in  the  original  outline,  at  main- 
taining the  Oriental  character.  The  furniture  was  French;  and 
opposite  the  throne  Canova's  Hebe,  by  Bertolini,  bounded  with  a 
golden  cup  from  a  pedestal  of  ormolu. 

The  guests  are  seated;  but  after  a  few  minutes  the  servants 
withdraw.  Small  tables  of  ebony  and  silver,  and  dumb-waiters  of 
ivory  and  gold,  conveniently  stored,  are  at  hand,  and  Spiridion 
never  leaves  the  room.  The  repast  was  most  refined,  most  ex- 
quisite, and  most  various.  It  was  one  of  those  meetings  where 
all  eat.  When  a  few  persons,  easy  and  unconstrained,  unincum- 
bered with  cares,  and  of  dispositions  addicted  to  enjoyment,  get 
together  at  past  midnight,  it  is  extraordinary  what  an  appetite 
they  evince.  Singers  also  are  proverbially  prone  to  gormandize; 
and  though  the  Bird  of  Paradise  unfortunately  possessed  the 
smallest  mouth  in  all  Singingland,  it  is  astonishing  how  she 
pecked!  But  they  talked  as  well  as  feasted,  and  were  really 
gay.  It  was  amusing  to  observe  —  that  is  to  say,  if  you  had 
been  a  dumb-waiter,  and  had  time  for  observation  —  how  charac- 
teristic was  the  affectation  of  the  women.  Lady  Squib  was  witty, 
Mrs,    Annesley   refined,    and   the    pseudo    Lady    Afy   fashionable. 


1 644 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD 


As  for  Mrs.  Montfort,  she  was,  as  her  wont,  somewhat  silent  but 
excessively  sublime.  The  Spaniard  said  nothing,  but  no  doubt 
indicated  the  possession  of  Cervantic  humor  by  the  sly  calmness 
with  which  she  exhausted  her  own  waiter  and  pillaged  her  neigh- 
bors. The  little  Frenchwoman  scarcely  ate  anything,  but  drank 
champagne  and  chatted,  with  equal  rapidity  and  equal  composure. 

"Prince,**  said  the  duke,  **  I  hope  Madame  de  Harestein  ap- 
proves of  your  trip  to  England  ?  ** 

The  prince  only  smiled,  for  he  was  of  a  silent  disposition,  and 
therefore  wonderfully  well  suited  his  traveling  companion. 

"Poor  Madame  de  Harestein !**  exclaimed  Count  Frill.  "What 
despair  she  was  in  when  you  left  Vienna,  my  dear  duke.  Ah! 
vion  Dieu !  I  did  what  I  could  to  amuse  her.  I  used  to  take 
my  guitar,  and  sing  to  her  morning  and  night,  but  without  the 
least  effect.  She  certainly  would  have  died  of  a  broken  heart,  if 
it  had  not  been  for  the  dancing-dogs.** 

"  The  dancing-dogs !  **  minced  the  pseudo  Lady  Aphrodite. 
"  How    shocking !  ** 

"  Did  they  bite  her  ?  **  asked  Lady  Squib,  "  and  so  inoculate  her 
with  gayety  ?  ** 

"Oh!  the  dancing-dogs,  my  dear  ladies!  everybody  was  mad 
about  the  dancing-dogs.  They  came  from  Peru,  and  danced  the 
mazurka  in  green  jackets  with  a  jabot  !     Oh !  what  a  jabot !  ** 

"  I  dislike  animals  excessively,  **  remarked  Mrs.   Annesley. 

"Dislike  the  dancing-dogs!**  said  Count  Frill.  "Ah,  my  good 
lady,  you  would  have  been  enchanted.  Even  the  kaiser  fed  them 
with  pistachio  nuts.  Oh,  so  pretty!  delicate  leetle  things,  soft 
shining  little  legs,  and  pretty  little  faces!  so  sensible,  and  with 
such  jabots  !  ** 

"I  assure  you,  they  were  excessively  amusing,**  said  the 
prince,  in  a  soft,  confidential  imdertone  to  his  neighbor,  Mrs. 
Montfort,  who,  admiring  his  silence,  which  she  took  for  state, 
smiled  and  bowed  with  fascinating  condescension. 

"And  what  else  has  happened  very  remarkable,  count,  since  I 
left  you  ?  **  asked  Lord   Darrell. 

"  Nothing,  nothing,  my  dear  Darrell.  This  bctise  of  a  war  has 
made  us  all  serious.  If  old  Clamstandt  had  not  married  that 
gipsy  little  Dugiria,  I  really  think  I  should  have  taken  a  turn  to 
Belgrade.  ** 

"You  should  not  eat  so  much,  poppet,**  drawled  Charles 
Annesley   to   the    Spaniard. 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD 


1645 


**  Why  not  ?  *^  said  the  little  French  lady,  with  great  animation, 
always  ready  to  fight  anybody's  battle,  provided  she  could  get  an 
opportunity  to  talk.  "  Why  not,  Mr.  Annesley  ?  You  never  will 
let  anybody  eat  —  I  never  eat  myself,  because  every  night,  hav- 
ing to  talk  so  much,  I  am  dry,  dry,  dry  —  so  I  drink,  drink, 
drink.  It  is  an  extraordinary  thing  that  there  is  no  language 
which  makes  you  so  thirsty  as  French.  I  always  have  heard 
that  all  the  s^outhern  languages,  Spanish  and  Italian,  make  you 
hungry.  ^^ 

"  What  can  be  the  reason  ?  '*  seriously  asked  the  pseudo  Lady 
Afy. 

**  Because  there  is  so  much  salt  in  it,  '*  said  Lord  Squib. 

^^  Delia,  '^  drawled  Mr.  Annesley,  **  you  look  very  pretty  to- 
night !  » 

"  I  am  charmed  to  charm  you,  Mr.  Annesley.  Shall  I  tell  you 
what  Lord  Bon  Mot  said  of  you  ?  ** 

"  No,  ma  inigno?ine!  I  never  wish  to  hear  my  own  good 
things.  ^^ 

"  Spoiled^  you  should  add,  ^'  said  Lady  Squib,  "  if  Bon  Mot  be 
m  the  case.'^ 

'*  Lord  Bon  Mot  is  a  most  gentlemanly  man,*  said  Delia, 
indignant  at  an  admirer  being  attacked.  "  He  always  wants  to 
be  amusing.  Whenever  he  dines  out,  he  comes  and  sits  with  me 
half  an  hour  to  catch  the  air  of  Parisian  badinage." 

^*  And  you  tell  him  a  variety  of  little  things  ? "  asked  Lord 
Squib,  insidiously  drawing  out  the  secret  tactics  of  Bon  Mot. 

'•'•  Beaucoup,  beaucoup,^^  said  Delia,  extending  two  little  white 
hands  sparkling  with  gems.  **  If  he  come  in  ever  so  —  how 
do  you  call  it?  heavy  —  not  that  —  in  the  domps  —  ah!  it  is 
that  —  if  ever  he  come  in  the  domps,  he  goes  out  always  like  a 
soufflce.  * 

^^As  empty,   I  have  no  doubt,  *  said  Lady  Squib. 

"And  as  sweet,  I  have  no  doubt,"  said  Lord  Squib;  "for  Del- 
croix  complains  sadly  of  your  excesses,   Delia." 

"  Mr.  Delcroix  complain  of  me !  That,  indeed,  is  too  bad. 
Just  because  I  recommended  Montmorency  de  Versailles  to  him 
for  an  excellent  customer,  ever  since  he  abuses  me,  merely 
because  Montmorenc}^  has  forgot,  in  the  hurry  of  going  off,  to 
pay  his  little  account." 

"But  he  says  you  have  got  all  the  things."  said  Lord  vSquib, 
whose  great  amusement  was  to  put  Delia  in  a  passion. 


jQ^b  LORD   BEACONSFIELD 

«What  of  that?^*  screamed  the  little  lady.  « Montmorency 
gave  them  to  me.'* 

<*  Don't  make  such  a  noise,**  said  the  Bird  of  Paradise.  «I 
never  can  eat  when  there  is  a  noise.  St.  James,**  continued  she, 
in  a  fretful  tone,  "they  make  such  a  noise!** 

"Annesley,  keep  Squib  quiet.** 

<*  Delia,  leave  that  young  man  alone.  If  Isidora  would  talk 
a  little  more,  and  you  eat  a  little  more,  I  think  you  would  be 
the  most  agreeable  little  ladies  I  know.  Poppet!  put  those  bon- 
bons in  your  pocket.  You  should  never  eat  sugar-plums  in  com- 
pany. ** 

Thus  talking  agreeable  nonsense,  tasting  agreeable  dishes, 
and  sipping  agreeable  wines,  an  hour  ran  on.  Sweetest  music 
from  an  unseen  source  ever  and  anon  sounded,  and  Spiridion 
swung  a  censer  full  of  perfumes  around  the  chamber.  At  length' 
the  duke  requested  Count  Frill  to  give  them  a  song.  The  Bird 
of  Paradise  would  never  sing  for  pleasure,  only  for  fame  and  a 
slight  check.  The  count  begged  to  decline,  and  at  the  same 
time  asked  for  a  guitar.  The  signora  sent  for  hers;  and  his 
Excellency,  preluding  with  a  beautiful  simper,  gave  them  some 
slight  thing  to  this  effect:  — 

Charming  Bignetta!  charming  Bignetta! 
What  a  gay  little  g^rl  is  charming  Bignetta? 

She  dances,  she  prattles, 

She  rides  and  she  rattles; 
But  she  always  is  charming  —  that  charming  Bignetta! 

Charming  Bignetta!  charming  Bignetta! 
What  a  wild  little  witch  is  charming  Bignetta! 
When  she  smiles  I'm  all  madness; 
When  she  frowns  I'm  all  sadness; 
But  she  always  is  smiling  —  that  charming  Bignetta  1 

Charming  Bignetta!  charming  Bignetta! 

What  a  wicked  young  rogue  is  charming  Bignetta! 

She  laughs  at  my  shyness, 

And  flirts  wnth  his  highness; 
Yet  still  she  is  charming — that  charming  Bignetta! 

Charming  Bignetta!  charming  Bignetta! 
What  a  dear  little  girl  is  charming  Bignetta! 

« Think  me  only  a  sister,» 

Said  she  trembling;  I  kissed  her. 
What  a  charming  young  sister  is  — charming  Bignetta.' 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD  1647 

He  ceased;   and  although 

<^  —  the  Ferrarese 
To  choicer  music  chimed  his  gay  guitar 
In  Este's  halls, » 

as  Casti  himself,  or  rather  Mr.  Rose,  choicc^ly  sings,  yet  still  his 
song  served  its  purpose,   for  it  raised  a  smile. 

"  I  wrote  that  for  Madame  Sapiepha,  at  the  Congress  of  Ve- 
rona,*^ said  Count  Frill.      *' It  has  been  thought  amusing.* 

<' Madame  Sapiepha  P*  exclaimed  the  Bird  of  Paradise.  ^^Whatl 
that  pretty  little  woman  who  has  such  pretty  caps  ?  ^* 

<^  The  same !  Ah !  what  caps !  Mon  Dieii  !  what  taste !  what 
taste !  '* 

"  You  like  caps,  then  ?  '*  asked  the  Bird  of  Paradise,  with  a 
sparkling  eye. 

"Oh!  if  there  be  anything  more  than  other  that  I  know  most, 
it  is  the  cap.  Here,  void!  ^^  said  he,  rather  oddly  unbuttoning 
his  waistcoat,  "you  see  what  lace  I  have  got.      Void  I  voici!^'* 

"  Ah !  me !  what  lace !  what  lace !  *  exclaimed  the  Bird  in 
rapture.  "  St.  James,  look  at  his  lace.  Come  here,  come  here, 
sit  next  me.  Let  me  look  at  that  lace.^^  She  examined  it  with 
great  attention,  then  turned  up  her  beautiful  eyes  with  a  fascinat- 
ing smile.  ^-^AJi!  c'cst  j'olie,  n'est-ce  pasf  But  you  like  caps.  I 
tell  you  what,  you  shall  see  my  caps.  Spiridion,  go,  mon  cher, 
and  tell  ma'amselle  to  bring  my  caps  —  all  my  caps,  one  of  each 
set.» 

In  due  time  entered  the  Swiss,  with  the  caps  —  all  the  caps  — 
one  of  each  set.  As  she  handed  them  in  turn  to  her  mistress, 
the  Bird  chirped  a  panegyric  .upon  each. 

"That  is  pretty,  is  it  not  —  and  this  also?  but  this  is  my 
favorite.  What  do  you  think  of  this  border  ?  c'est  belle,  cettc  gar- 
niture? ct  ce  jabot,  c'est  tres  s^diiisant,  n'est-ce  pas?  Mais  void, 
the  cap  of  Princess  Lichtenstein.  Oest  superb,  c'est  mon  favori. 
But  I  also  love  very  much  this  of  the  Duchesse  de  Berri.  She 
gave  me  the  pattern  herself.  And  after  all,  this  cornette  h  petite 
sante  of  Lady  Blaze  is  a  dear  little  thing;  then,  again,  this  coiffe 
h  dent  el le  of  Lady  Macaroni  is  quite  a  pet.® 

"Pass  them  down,^^  said  Lord  Squib  ^^we  want  to  look  at 
them.*  Accordingly  they  were  passed  down.  Lord  Squib  put 
one  Olio 


1648  LORD  BEACONSFIELD 

"  Do  I  look  superb,  sentimental,  or  only  pretty  ?  **  asked  his 
lordship.  The  example  was  contagious,  and  most  of  the  caps 
were  appropriated.  No  one  laughed  more  than  their  mistress, 
who,  not  having  the  slightest  idea  of  the  value  of  money,  would 
have  given  them  all  away  on  the  spot;  not  from  any  good-natured 
feeling,  but  from  the  remembrance  that  to-morrow  she  might 
amuse  half  an  hour  buying  others. 

While  some  were  stealing,  and  she  remonstrating,  the  duke 
clapped  his  hands  like  a  caliph.  The  curtain  at  the  end  of  the 
apartment  was  immediately  withdrawn  and  the  ball-room  stood 
revealed. 

It  was  of  the  same  size  as  the  banqueting-hall.  Its  walls 
exhibited  a  long  perspective  of  gilt  pilasters,  the  frequent  piers  of 
which  were  entirely  of  plate  looking-glass,  save  where  occasion- 
ally a  picture  had  been,  as  it  were,  inlaid  in  its  rich  frame. 
Here  was  the  Titian  Venus  of  the  Tribune,  deliciously  copied 
by  a  French  artist;  there,  the  Roman  Fornarina,  with  her  deli- 
cate grace,  beamed  like  the  personification  of  Raphael's  genius. 
Here  Zuleikha,  living  in  the  light  and  shade  of  that  magician 
Guercino,  in  vain  summoned  the  passions  of  the  blooming  He- 
brew; and  there  Cleopatra,  preparing  for  her  last  immortal  hour, 
proved  by  what  we  saw  that  Guido  had  been  a  lover. 

The  ceiling  of  this  apartment  was  richly  painted  and  richly 
gilt;  from  it  were  suspended  three  lustres  by  golden  cords, 
which  threw  a  softened  light  upon  the  floor  of  polished  and  curi- 
ously inlaid  woods.  At  the  end  of  the  apartment  was  an  orches- 
tra, and  here  the  pages,  under  the  direction  of  Carlstein,  offered 
a  very  efficient  domestic  band. 

Round  the  room  waltzed  the  elegant  revelers.  Softly  and 
slowly,  led  by  their  host,  they  glided  along  like  spirits  of  air; 
but  each  time  that  the  duke  passed  the  musicians,  the  music 
became  livelier,  and  the  motion  more  brisk,  till  at  length  you 
might  have  mistaken  them  for  a  college  of  spinning  dervishes. 
One  by  one,  an  exhausted  couple  slunk  away.  Some  threw 
themselves  on  a  sofa,  some  monopolized  an  easy-chair;  but  in 
twenty  minutes  all  the  dancers  had  disappeared.  At  length  Pea- 
cock Piggott  gave  a  groan,  which  denoted  returning  energy,  and 
raised  a  stretching  leg  in  air,  bringing  up,  though  most  unwit- 
tingly, on  his  foot  one  of  the    Bird's  sublime  and  beautiful  caps. 

"Halloo!  Piggott,  armed  cap  an  picd^  I  see,'*  said  Lord  Squib. 
This  joke  was  a  signal  for  general  resuscitation.      ... 


LORD  BEACONSFIELD 


1649 


Here  they  lounged  in  different  parties,  talking  on  such  sub- 
jects as  idlers  ever  fall  upon;  now  and  then  plucking  a  flower — 
now  and  then  listening  to  the  fountain — now  and  then  lingering 
over  the  distant  music  —  and  now  and  then  strolling  through  a 
small  apartment  which  opened  to  their  walks,  and  which  bore  the 
title  of  the  Temple  of  Gnidus.  Here  Canova's  Venus  breathed 
an  atmosphere  of  perfume  and  of  light — that  wonderful  statue 
whose  full-charged  eye  is  not  very  classical,  to  be  sure  —  but 
then,  how  true! 

Lord  Squib  proposed  a  visit  to  the  theatre,  which  he  had 
ordered  to  be  lit  up.  To  the  theatre  they  repaired.  They 
rambled  over  every  part  of  the  house,  amused  themselves,  to 
the  horror  of  Mr.  Annesley,  with  a  visit  to  the  gallery,  and  then 
collected  behind  the  scenes.  They  were  excessively  amused 
with  the  properties;  and  Lord  Squib  proposed  they  should  dress 
themselves.  Enough  champagne  had  been  q^-iaffed  to  render 
any  proposition  palatable,  and  in  a  few  minutes  they  were  all 
in  costume.  A  crowd  of  queens  and  chambermaids,  Jews  and 
chimney-sweeps,  lawyers  and  charleys,  Spanish  doni?  and  Irish 
officers,  rushed  upon  the  stage.  The  little  Spaniard  was  Alma- 
viva,  and  fell  into  magnificent  attitudes,  with  her  sword  and 
plume.  Lord  Squib  was  the  old  woman  of  Brentford,  and  very 
funny.  Sir  Lucius  Grafton,  Harlequin;  and  Darrell,  Grimaldi. 
The  prince  and  the  count,  without  knowing  it,  figured  as  watch- 
men. Squib  whispered  Annesley  that  Sir  Lucius  O'Trigger 
might  appear  in  character,  but  was  prudent  enough  to  suppress 
the  joke. 

The  band  was  sumrhoned,  and  they  danced  quadrilles  with 
infinite  spirit,  and  finished  the  night,  at  the  suggestion  of  Lord 
Squib,  by  breakfasting  on  the  stage.  By  the  time  this  meal 
was  dispatched,  the  purple  light  of  morn  had  broken  into  the 
bi^ilding,  and  the  ladies  proposed  an  immediate  departure.  Mrs 
Montfort  and  her  sister  were  sent  home  in  one  of  the  duke's 
carriages;  and  the  foreign  guests  were  requested  by  him  to  be 
their  escort.  The  respective  parties  drove  off.  Two  cabriolets 
lingered  to  the  last,  and  finally  carried  away  the  French  actress 
and  the  Spanish  dancer.  Lord  Darrell,  and  Peacock  Piggott;  but 
whether  the  two  gentlemen  went  in  one  and  two  ladies  in  the 
other  I  cannot  aver.     I  hope  not. 

There  was  at  length  a  dead  silence,  and  the  young  duke  was 

left  to  solitude  and  the  signora! 
Ill — 104 


1650  LORD  BEACONSFIELD 

SQUIBS    FROM    <THE    YOUNG    DUKE> 
Charles  Annksley 

DANDY  has  been  voted  vulgar,  and  beau  is  now  the  word.  I 
doubt  whether  the  revival  will  stand;  and  as  for  the  ex- 
ploded title,  though  it  had  its  faults  at  first,  the  muse  or 
Byron  has  made  it  not  only  English,  but  classical.  However,  I 
dare  say  I  can  do  without  either  of  these  words  at  present. 
Charles  Annesley  could  hardly  be  called  a  dandy  or  a  beau. 
There  was  nothing  in  his  dress,  though  some  mysterious  arrange- 
ment in  his  costume  —  some  rare  simplicity — some  curious  happi- 
ness—  always  made  it  distinguished;  there  was  nothing,  however, 
in  his  dress  which  could  account  for  the  influence  which  he 
exercised  over  the  manners  of  his  contemporaries.  Charles 
Annesley  was  about  thirty.  He  had  inherited  from  his  father,  a 
younger  brother,  a  small  estate ;  and  though  heir  to  a  wealthy 
earldom,  he  had  never  abused  what  the  world  called  ^*his  pros- 
pects." Yet  his  establishments  —  his  little  house  in  Mayfair  — 
his  horses  —  his  moderate  stud  at  Melton  —  were  all  imique,  and 
everything  connected  with  him  was  unparalleled  for  its  elegance, 
its  invention,  and  its  refinement.  But  his  manner  was  his  magic. 
His  natural  and  subdued  nonchalance,  so  different  from  the 
assumed  non-emotion  of  a  mere  dandy;  his  coldness  of  heart, 
which  was  hereditary,  not  acquired;  his  cautious  courage,  and  his 
unadulterated  self-love,  had  permitted  him  to  mingle  much  with 
mankind  without  being  too  deeply  involved  in  the  play  of  their 
passions;  while  his  exquisite  sense  of  the  ridiculous  quickly 
revealed  those  weaknesses  to  him  which  his  delicate  satire  did 
not  spare,  even  while  it  refrained  from  wounding.'  All  feared, 
many  admired,  and  none  hated  him.  He  was  too  powerful  not 
to  dread,  too  dexterous  not  to  admire,  too  superior  to  hate. 
Perhaps  the  great  secret  of  his  manner  was  his  exquisite  super- 
ciliousness; a  quality  which,  of  all,  is  the  most  difficult  to  man- 
age. Even  with  his  intimates  he  was  never  confidential,  and 
perpetually  assumed  his  public  character  with  the  private  coterie 
which  he  loved  to  rule.  On  the  whole,  he  was  unlike  any  of  the 
leading  men  of  modern  days,  and  rather  reminded  one  of  the 
fine  gentlemen  of  our  old  brilliant  comedy  —  the  Dorimants,  the 
Bellairs,  and  the  Mirabels. 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD 


The  Fussy   Hostess 


1651 


Men  shrink  from  a  fussy  woman.  And  few  can  aspire  to  regu- 
late the  destinies  of  their  species,  even  in  so  slight  a  point  as 
an  hour's  amusement,  without  rare  powers.  There  is  no  greater 
sin  than  to  be  trop  prononcee.  A  want  of  tact  is  worse  than  a 
want  of  virtue.  Some  women,  it  is  said,  work  on  pretty  well 
against  the  tide  without  the  last.  I  never  knew  one  who  did 
not  sink  who  ever  dared  to  sail  without  the  first. 

Loud  when  they  should  be  low,  quoting  the  wrong  person, 
talking  on  the  wrong  subject,  teasing  with  notice,  excruciating 
with  attentions,  disturbing  a  tete-a-tete  in  order  to  make  up  a 
dance;  wasting  eloquence  in  persuading  a  man  to  participate  in 
amusement  whose  reputation  depends  on  his  social  sullenness; 
exacting  homage  with  a  restless  eye,  and  not  permitting  the  least 
worthy  knot  to  be  untwined  without  their  divinityships'  inter- 
ference; patronizing  the  meek,  anticipating  the  slow,  intoxicating 
with  compliment,  plastering  with  praise  that  you  in  return  may 
gild  with  flattery:  in  short,  energetic  without  elegance,  active 
without  grace,  and  loquacious  without  wit;  mistaking  bustle  for 
style,  raillery  for  badinage,  and  noise  for  gayety  —  these  are  the 
characters  who  mar  the  very  career  they  think  they  are  creating, 
and  who  exercise  a  fatal  influence  on  the  destinies  of  all  those 
who  have  the  misfortune  to  be  connected  with  them. 

Public   Speaking 

Eloquence  is  the  child  of  Knowledge.  When  a  mind  is  full, 
like  a  wholesome  river,  it  is  also  clear.  Confusion  and  obscurity 
are  much  oftener  the  results  of  ignorance  than  of  inefficiency. 
Few  are  the  men  who  cannot  express  their  meaning  when  the 
occasion  demands  the  energ}^;  as  the  lowest  will  defend  their 
lives  with  acuteness,  and  sometimes  even  with  eloquence.  They 
are  masters  of  their  subject.  Knowledge  must  be  gained  by  our- 
selves. Mankind  may  supply  us  with  facts;  but  the  results,  even 
if  they  agree  with  previous  ones,  must  be  the  work  of  our  own 
mind.  To  make  others  feel,  we  must  feel  ourselves;  and  to  feel 
ourselves,  we  must  be  natural.  This  we  can  never  be  when  we 
are  vomiting  forth  the  dogmas  of  the  schools.  Knowledge  is  not 
a  mere  collection  of  words;  and  it  is  a  delusion  to  suppose  that 
thought  can  be  obtained  by  the  aid  of  any  other  intellect  than 


1652 


LORD  BEACONSFIELD 


our  own.  What  is  repetition,  by  a  curious  mystery,  ceases  to  be 
truth,  even  if  it  were  truth  when  it  was  first  beard;  as  the 
shadow  in  a  mirror,  though  it  move  and  mimic  all  the  actions  of 
vitality,  is  not  life.  When  a  man  is  not  speaking  or  writing 
from  his  own  mind,  he  is  as  insipid  company  as  a  looking-glass. 
Before  a  man  can  address  a  popular  assembly  with  command, 
he  must  know  something  of  mankind,  and  he  can  know  nothing 
of  mankind  without  he  knows  something  of  himself.  Self-knowl- 
edge is  the  property  of  that  man  whose  passions  have  their  play, 
but  who  ponders  over  their  results.  Such  a  man  sympathizes  by 
inspiration  with  his  kind.  He  has  a  key  to  every  heart.  He  can 
divine,  in  the  flash  of  a  single  thought,  all  that  they  require,  all 
that  they  wish.  Such  a  man  speaks  to  their  very  core.  All  feel 
that  a  master  hand  tears  off  the  veil  of  cant,  with  which,  from 
necessity,  they  have  enveloped  their  souls;  for  cant  is  nothing 
more  than  the  sophistry  which  results  from  attempting  to  account 
for  what  is  unintelligible,  or  to  defend  what  is  improper. 

Female  Beauty 

There  are  some  sorts  of  beauty  which  defy  description,  and 
almost  scrutiny.  Some  faces  rise  upon  us  in  the  tumult  of  life, 
like  stars  from  out  the  sea,  or  as  if  they  had  moved  out  of  a 
picture.  Our  first  impression  is  anything  but  fleshly.  We  are 
struck  dumb — we  gasp  for  breath  —  our  limbs  quiver  —  a  faint- 
ness  glides  over  our  frame  —  we  are  awed;  instead  of  gazing 
upon  the  apparition,  we  avert  the  eyes,  which  yet  will  feed  upon 
its  beauty.  A  strange  sort  of  tmearthly  pain  mixes  with  the 
intense  pleasure.  And  not  till,  with  a  struggle,  we  call  back  to 
our  memory  the  commonplaces  of  existence,  can  we  recover  our 
commonplace  demeanor.  These,  indeed,  are  rare  visions — these, 
indeed,  are  early  feelings,  when  our  young  existence  leaps  with 
its  mountain  torrents;  but  as  the  river  of  our  life  rolls  on,  our 
eyes  grow  dimmer,  or  our  blood  more  cold. 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD  16^3 

LOTHAIR    IN    PALESTINE 
From  <Lothair> 

A  PERSON  approached  Lothair  by  the  pathway  from  Bethany. 
It  was  the  Syrian  gentleman  whom  he  had  met  at  the  con- 
siilate.  As  he  was  passing  Lothair,  he  saluted  him  with 
the  grace  which  had  been  before  remarked;  and  Lothair,  who 
was  by  nature  courteous,  and  even  inclined  a  little  to  ceremony 
in  his  manners,  especially  with  those  with  whom  he  was  not  inti- 
mate, immediately  rose,  as  he  would  not  receive  such  a  salutation 
in  a  reclining  posture. 

"Let  me  not  disturb  you,^*  said  the  stranger;  "or,  if  we  must 
be  on  equal  terms,  let  me  also  be  seated,  for  this  is  a  view  that 
never  palls.** 

"It  is  perhaps  familiar  to  you,**  said  Lothair;  "but  with  me, 
only  a  pilgrim,   its  effect  is  fascinating,  almost  overwhelming.** 

"  The  view  of  Jerusalem  never  becomes  familiar,  **  said  the 
Syrian ;  "  for  its  associations  are  so  transcendent,  so  various,  so 
inexhaustible,  that  the  mind  can  never  anticipate  its  course  of 
thought  and  feeling,  when  one  sits,  as  we  do  now,  on  this  immor- 
tal mount.**     .     . 

"I  have  often  wished  to  visit  the  Sea  of  Galilee,'*  said 
Lothair. 

"  Well,  5^ou  have  now  an  opportunity,  **  said  the  vSyrian :  "  the 
north  of  Palestine,  though  it  has  no  tropical  splendor,  has  much 
variety  and  a  peculiar  natural  charm.  The  burst  and  brightness 
of  spring  have  not  yet  quite  vanished;  you  would  find  our  plains 
radiant  with  wild-flowers,  and  our  hills  green  with  young  crops, 
and  though  we  cannot  rival  Lebanon,  we  have  forest  glades 
among  our  famous  hills  that  when  once   seen  are    remembered.** 

"  But  there  is  something  to  me  more  interesting  than  the 
splendor  of  tropical  scenery,**  said  Lothair,  "even  if  Galilee 
could  offer  it.      I  wish  to  visit  the  cradle  of  my  faith.** 

"  And  you  would  do  wisely,  **  said  the  Syrian,  "  for  there  is  no 
doubt  the  spiritual  nature  of  man  is  developed  in  this  land.** 

"  And  yet  there  are  persons  at  the  present  day  who  doubt  — 
even  deny  —  the  spiritual  nature  of  man,**  said  Lothair.  "I  do 
not,  I  could  not  —  there  are  reasons  why  I  could  not.** 

"  There  are  some  things  I  know,  and  some  things  I  believe,  ** 
said  the  Syrian.  "  I  know  that  I  have  a  soul,  and  I  believe  that 
it  is  immortal.** 


1(^54 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD 


"  It  is  science  that,  by  demonstrating  the  insignificance  of  this 
globe  in  the  vast  scale  of  creation,  has  led  to  this  infidelity,'*  said 
Lothair. 

"  Science  may  prove  the  insignificance  of  this  globe  in  the 
scale  of  creation,**  said  the  stranger,  **but  it  cannot  prove  the 
insignificance  of  man.  What  is  the  earth  compared  with  the  sun  ? 
a  molehill  by  a  mountain;  yet  the  inhabitants  of  this  earth  can 
discover  the  elements  of  which  the  great  orb  consists,  and  will 
probably  ere  long  ascertain  all  the  conditions  of  its  being.  Nay, 
the  human  mind  can  penetrate  far  beyond  the  sun.  There  is  no 
relation,  therefore,  between  the  faculties  of  man  and  the  scale  in 
creation  of  the  planet  which  he  inhabits.** 

"I  was  glad  to  hear  you  assert  the  other  night  the  spiritual 
nature  of  man  in  opposition  to  Mr.   Phoebus.** 

"Ah,  Mr.  Phoebus!**  said  the  stranger,  with  a  smile.  "He  is 
an  old  acquaintance  of  mine.  And  I  must  say  he  is  very  con- 
sistent—  except  in  paying  a  visit  to  Jerusalem.  That  does  surprise 
me.  He  said  to  me  the  other  night  the  same  things  as  he  said 
to  me  at  Rome  many  years  ago.  He  would  revive  the  worship 
of  Nature.  The  deities  whom  he  so  eloquently  describes  and  so 
exquisitely  delineates  are  the  ideal  personifications  of  the  most 
eminent  human  qualities,  and  chiefly  the  physical.  Physical 
beauty  is  his  standard  of  excellence,  and  he  has  a  fanciful  theory 
that  moral  order  would  be  the  consequence  of  the  worship  of 
physical  beauty;  for  without  moral  order  he  holds  physical  beauty 
cannot  be  maintained.  But  the  answer  to  Mr.  Phoebus  is,  that 
his  system  has  been  tried  and  has  failed,  and  under  conditions 
more  favorable  than  are  likely  to  exist  again;  the  worship  of 
Nature  ended  in  the  degradation  of  the  human  race.** 

"  But  Mr.  Phoebus  cannot  really  believe  in  Apollo  and  Venus,  ** 
said  Lothair.  "These  are  phrases.  He  is,  I  suppose,  what  is 
called  a  Pantheist.** 

"  No  doubt  the  Olympus  of  Mr.  Phoebus  is  the  creation  of 
his  easel,**  replied  the  Syrian.  "I  should  not,  however,  describe 
him  as  a  Pantheist,  whose  creed  requires  more  abstraction  than 
Mr.  Phoebus,  the  worshiper  of  Nature,  would  tolerate.  His  school 
never  care  to  pursue  any  investigation  which  cannot  be  followed 
by  the  eye  —  and  the  worship  of  the  beautiful  always  ends  in  an 
orgy.  As  for  Pantheism,  it  is  Atheism  in  domino.  The  belief 
in  a  Creator  who  is  unconscious  of  creating  is  more  monstrous 
than  any  dogma  of  any  of  the  churches  in  this  city,  and  we  have 
them  all  here.** 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD 


1655 


**  But  there  are  people  now  who  tell  you  that  there  never 
was  any  creation,  and  therefore  there  never  could  have  been  a 
Creator,*^    said  Lothair. 

^*And  which  is  now  advanced  with  the  confidence  of  novelty/^ 
said  the  Syrian,  **  though  all  of  it  has  been  urged,  and  vainly 
urged,  thousands  of  years  ago.  There  must  be  design,  or  all  we 
see  would  be  without  sense,  and  I  do  not  believe  in  the  unmean- 
ing. As  for  the  natural  forces  to  which  all  creation  is  now 
attributed,  we  know  they  are  unconscious,  while  consciousness  is 
as  inevitable  a  portion  of  our  existence  as  the  eye  or  the  hand. 
The  conscious  cannot  be  derived  from  the  unconscious.  Man  is 
divine.** 

**  I  wish  I  could  assure  myself  of  the  personality  of  the  Cre- 
ator, '*  said  Lothair.  "  I  cling  to  that,  but  they  say  it  is  unphilo- 
sophical.  ** 

**  In  what  sense  ?  **  asked  the  Syrian.  ^*  Is  it  more  unphilo- 
sophical  to  believe  in  a  personal  God,  omnipotent  and  omniscient, 
than  in  natural  forces  unconscious  and  irresistible  ?  Is  it 
unphilosophical  to  combine  power  with  intelligence  ?  Goethe, 
a  Spinozist  who  did  not  believe  in  Spinoza,  said  that  he  could 
bring  his  mind  to  the  conception  that  in  the  centre  of  space  we 
might  meet  with  a  monad  of  pure  intelligence.  What  may  be 
the  centre  of  space  I  leave  to  the  daedal  imagination  of  the 
author  of  ^  Faust*;  but  a  monad  of  pure  intelligence  —  is  that 
more  philosophical  than  the  truth  first  revealed  to  man  amid 
these  everlasting  hills,**  said  the  Syrian,  ^'■tha.t  God  made  man 
in  his  own  image  ?  ** 

^^  I  have  often  found  in  that  assurance  a  source  of  sublime 
consolation,**  said  Lothair. 

"  It  is  the  charter  of  the  nobility  of  man,  **  said  the  Syrian, 
^*  one  of  the  divine  dogmas  revealed  in  this  land ;  not  the  inven- 
tion of  councils,  not  one  of  which  was  held  on  this  sacred  soil, 
confused  assemblies  first  got  together  by  the  Greeks,  and  then 
by  barbarous  nations  in  barbarous  times.** 

<*  Yet  the  divine  land  no  longer  tells  us  divine  things,  **  said 
Lothair. 

"  It  may  or  may  not  have  fulfilled  its  destiny,  **  said  the  Syrian. 
<<  *  In  my  Father's  house  are  many  mansions,*  and  by  the  various 
families  of  nations  the  designs  of  the  Creator  are  accomplished. 
God  works  by  races,  and  one  was  appointed  in  due  season  and 
after  many  developments  to  reveal  and  expound  in  this  land  the 


1656 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD 


spiritual  nature  of  man.  The  Aryan  and  the  Semite  are  of  the 
same  blood  and  origin,  but  when  they  quitted  their  central  land 
they  were  ordained  to  follow  opposite  courses.  Each  division 
of  the  great  race  has  developed  one  portion  of  the  double  nature 
of  humanity,  till,  after  all  their  wanderings,  they  met  again,  and, 
represented  by  their  two  choicest  families,  the  Hellenes  and  the 
Hebrews,  brought  together  the  treasures  of  their  accumulated 
wisdom,  and  secured  the  civilization  of  man.*^ 

**  Those  among  whom  I  have  lived  of  late,  '*  said  Lothair, 
"have  taught  me  to  trust  much  in  councils,  and  to  believe  that 
without  them  there  could  be  no  foundation  for  the  Church.  I 
observe  you  do  not  speak  in  that  vein,  though,  like  myself,  you 
find  solace  in  those  dogmas  which  recognize  the  relations  between 
the  created  and  the  Creator.^* 

"There  can  be  no  religion  without  that  recognition,^^  said  the 
Syrian,  "  and  no  creed  can  possibly  be  devised  without  such  a 
recognition  that  would  satisfy  man.  Why  we  are  here,  whence 
we  come,  whither  we  go  —  these  are  questions  which  man  is 
organically  framed  and  forced  to  ask  himself,  and  that  would 
not  be  the  case  if  they  could  not  be  answered.  As  for  churches 
depending  on  councils,  the  first  council  was  held  more  than  three 
centuries  after  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  We  Syrians  had 
churches  in  the  interval;  no  one  can  deny  that.  I  bow  before 
the  divine  decree  that  swept  them  away  from  Antioch  to  Jerusa- 
lem, but  I  am  not  yet  prepared  to  transfer  my  spiritual  allegiance 
to  Italian  popes  and  Greek  patriarchs.  We  believe  that  our 
family  were  among  the  first  followers  of  Jesus,  and  that  we  then 
held  lands  in  Bashan  which 'we  hold  now.  We  had  a  gospel  once 
in  our  district  where  there  was  some  allusion  to  this,  and  being 
written  by  neighbors,  and  probably  at  the  time,  I  dare  say  it 
was  accurate;  but  the  Western  Churches  declared  our  gospel  was 
not  authentic,  though  why  I  cannot  tell,  and  they  succeeded  in 
extirpating  it.  It  was  not  an  additional  reason  why  we  should 
enter  into  their  fold.  So  I  am  content  to  dwell  in  Galilee  and 
trace  the  footsteps  of  my  Divine  Master,  musing  over  his  life 
and  pregnant  sayings  amid  the  mounts  he  sanctified  and  the 
waters  he  loved  so  well.** 


i657 


BEAUMARCHAIS 

(1732-1799) 

BY   BRANDER   MATTHEWS 

[lERRE  AuGUSTiN  Caron  was  bom  in  Paris,  January  24th,  1732. 
He  was  the  son  of  a  watchmaker,  and  learned  his  father's 
trade.  He  invented  a  new  escapement,  and  was  allowed 
to  call  himself  <<Clockmaker  to  the  King  >>  —  Louis  XV.  At  twenty- 
four  he  married  a  widow,  and  took  the  name  of  Beaumarchais  from 
a  small  fief  belonging  to  her.  Within  a  year  his  wife  died.  Being  a 
fine  musician,  he  was  appointed  instructor  of  the  King's  daughters; 
and  he  was  quick  to  turn  to  good  account  the  influence  thus  acquired. 
In  1764  he  made  a  sudden  trip  to 
Spain  to  vindicate  a  sister  of  his,  who 
had  been  betrothed  to  a  man  called 
Clavijo  and  whom  this  Spaniard  had 
refused  to  marry.  He  succeeded  in 
his  mission,  and  his  own  brilliant  ac- 
count of  this  characteristic  episode  in 
his  career  suggested  to  Goethe  the 
play  of  ^Clavigo.*  Beaumarchais  him- 
self brought  back  from  Madrid  a  liking 
for  things  Spanish  and  a  knowledge 
of  Iberian  customs  and  character. 

He  had  been  a  watchmaker,  a  musi- 
cian, a  court  official,  a  speculator,  and 
it  was  only  when  he  was  thirty-five 
that    he     turned     dramatist.       Various 

French  authors,  Diderot  especiall}-,  weary  of  confinement  to  tragedy 
and  comedy,  the  only  two  forms  then  admitted  on  the  French  stage, 
were  seeking  a  new  dramatic  formula  in  which  they  might  treat  pa- 
thetic situations  of  modern  life;  and  it  is  due  largely  to  their  efforts 
that  the  modern  ^<play^>  or  "  drama,  ^*  the  story  of  every-day  exist- 
ence, has  been  evolved.  The  first  dramatic  attempt  of  Beaumarchais 
was  a  drama  called  <  Eugenie,*  acted  at  the  Theatre  Franyais  in  1767, 
and  succeeding  just  enough  to  encourage  him  to  try  again.  The  sec- 
ond, ^  The  Two  Friends,*  acted  in  1770,  was  a  frank  failure.  For  the 
pathetic,  Beaumarchais  had  little  aptitude ;  and  these  two  serious 
efiforts  were  of  use  to  him  onl^^  so  far  as  their  performance  may  have 
helped  him  to  master  the  many  technical  difficulties  of  the  theatre. 


Beaumarchais 


i6s8 


BEAUMARCHAIS 


Beaiimarchais  had  married  a  second  time  in  1768,  and  he  had 
been  engaged  in  various  speculations  with  the  financier  Paris-Duver- 
ney.  In  1770  his  wife  died,  and  so  did  his  associate;  and  he  found 
himself  soon  involved  in  lawsuits,  into  the  details  of  which  it  is  need- 
less to  go,  but  in  the  course  of  which  he  published  a  series  of 
memoirs,  or  statements  of  his  case  for  the  public  at  large.  These 
memoirs  are  among  the  most  vigorous  of  all  polemical  writings;  they 
were  very  clever  and  very  witty;  they  were  vivacious  and  audacious; 
they  were  unfailingly  interesting;  and  they  were  read  as  eagerly  as 
the  *  Letters  of  Junius.^  Personal  at  first,  the  suits  soon  became 
political;  and  part  of  the  public  approval  given  to  the  attack  of 
Beaumarchais  on  judicial  injustice  was  due  no  doubt  to  the  general 
discontent  with  the  existing  order  in  France.  His  daring  conduct  of 
his  own  cause  made  him  a  personality.  He  was  intrusted  with  one 
secret  mission  by  Louis  XV. ;  and  when  Louis  XVI.  came  to  the 
throne,  he  managed  to  get  him  again  employed  confidentially. 

Not  long  after  his  two  attempts  at  the  serious  drama,  he  had  tried 
to  turn  to  account  his  musical  faculty  by  writing  both  the  book  and 
the  score  of  a  comic  opera,  which  had,  however,  been  rejected  by  the 
Comedie-Italienne  (the  predecessor  of  the  present  Opera  Comique). 
After  a  while  Beaumarchais  cut  out  his  music  and  worked  over  his 
plot  into  a  five-act  comedy  in  prose,  ''The  Barber  of  Seville.^  It  was 
produced  by  the  Theatre  Frangais  in  1775,  and  like  the  contemporary 
<  Rivals^  of  Sheridan, — the  one  English  author  with  whom  Beau- 
marchais must  always  be  compared, — it  was  a  failure  on  the  first 
night  and  a  lasting  success  after  the  author  had  reduced  it  and  rear- 
ranged it.  <The  Barber  of  Seville  >  was  like  the  *  Gil  Blas^  of  Lesage 
in  that,  while  it  was  seemingly  Spanish  in  its  scenes,  it  was  in  real- 
ity essentially  French.  It  contained  one  of  the  strongest  characters 
in  literature,  —  Figaro,  a  reincarnation  of  the  intriguing  servant  of 
Menander  and  Plautus  and  Moliere.  Simple  in  plot,  ingenious  in 
incident,    brisk  in   dialogue,    broadly   effective    in    character-drawing, 

•  The  Barber  of  Seville  ^  is  the  most  famous  French  comedy  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  with  the  single  exception  of  its  si;ccessor  from 
the  same  pen,   which  appeared  nine  3'ears  later. 

During  those  years  Beaumarchais  was  not  idle.  Like  Defoe,  he 
was  always  devising  projects  for  money-making.     A  few  months  after 

*  The  Barber  of  Seville  ^  had  been  acted,  the  American  Revolution 
began,  and  Beaumarchais  was  a  chief  agent  in  supplying  the  Ameri- 
cans with  arms,  ammunition,  and  supplies.  He  had  a  cruiser  of  his 
own,  Le  Fier  Roderigue,  which  was  in  D'Estaing's  fleet.  When  the 
independence  of  the  United  States  was  recognized  at  last,  Beaumar- 
chais had  a  pecuniary  claim  against  the  young  nation  which  long 
remained  unsettled. 


BEAUMARCHAIS 


1659 


Not  content  with  making  war  on  his  own  account  almost,  Beau- 
marchais  also  undertook  the  immense  task  of  publishing  a  complete 
edition  of  Voltaire.  He  also  prepared  a  sequel  to  the  <  Barber,  >  in 
which  Figaro  should  be  even  more  important,  and  should  serve  as  a 
mouthpiece  for  declamatory  criticism  of  the  social  order.  But  his 
^  Marriage  of  Figaro  ^  was  so  full  of  the  revolutionary  ferment  that  its 
performance  was  forbidden.  Following  the  example  of  Moliere  under 
the  similar  interdiction  of  *■  Tartuffe,  ^  Beaumarchais  was  untiring  in 
arousing  interest  in  his  unacted  play,  reading  it  himself  in  the  houses 
of  the  great.  Finally  it  was  authorized,  and  when  the  first  perform- 
ance took  place  at  the  Theatre  Frangais  in  1784,  the  crush  to  see  it 
was  so  great  that  three  persons  were  stifled  to  death.  The  new 
comedy  was  as  amusing  and  as  adroit  as  its  predecessor,  and  the  hits 
at  the  times  were  sharper  and  swifter  and  more  frequent.-  How 
demoralized  society  was  then  may  be  gauged  by  the  fact  that  this 
disintegrating  satire  was  soon  acted  by  the  amateurs  of  the  court, 
a  chief  character  being  impersonated  by  Marie  Antoinette  herself. 

The  career  of  Beaumarchais  reached  its  climax  with  the  produc- 
tion of  the  second  of  the  Figaro  plays.  Afterward  he  wrote  the 
libretto  for  an  opera,  ^Tarare,^  produced  with  Salieri's  music  in  1787; 
the  year  before  he  had  married  for  the  third  time.  In  a  heavy  play 
called  ^  The  Guilty  Mother,^  acted  with  slight  success  in  1790,  he 
brought  in  Figaro  yet  once  more.  During  the  Terror  he  emigrated 
to  Holland,  returning  to  Paris  in  1796  to  find  his  sumptuous  mansion 
despoiled.  May  i8th,  1799,  he  died,  leaving  a  fortune  of  $200,000, 
besides  numerous  claims  against  the  French  nation  and  the  United 
States. 

An  interesting  parallel  could  be  drawn  between  *■  The  Rivals '  and 
the  ^  School  for  Scandal  >  on  the  one  side,  and  on  the  other  <  The 
Barber  of  Seville  ^  and  <  The  Marriage  of  Figaro  ^ ;  and  there  are  also 
piquant  points  of  likeness  between  Sheridan  and  Beaumarchais.  But 
Sheridan,  with  all  his  failings,  was  of  sterner  stuff  than  Beaumarchais. 
He  had  a  loftier  political  morality,  and  he  served  the  State  more 
loyally.  Yet  the  two  comedies  of  Beaumarchais  are  like  the  two 
comedies  of  Sheridan  in  their  incessant  wit,  in  their  dramaturgic 
effectiveness,  and  in  the  histrionic  opportunities  they  afford.  Indeed, 
the  French  comedies  have  had  a  wider  audience  than  the  English, 
thanks  to  an  Italian  and  a  German, — to  Rossini  who  set  <  The  Bar- 
ber of  Seville  *  to  music,  and  to  Mozart  who  did  a  like  service  for 
*  The  Marriage  of  Figaro.  > 


,^7nfia^&A^ 


l66o  BEAUMARCHAIS 

FROM   <THE   BARBER  OF   SEVILLE > 

Outwitting  a  Guardian 

[Rosina's  lover,  Count  Almaviva,  attempts  to  meet  and  converse  with  her 
by  hoodwinking  Dr.  Bartolo,  her  zealous  guardian.  He  comes  in  disguise  to 
Bartolo's  dwelling,  in  a  room  of  which  the  scene  is  laid.] 

[Ejiter  Count  Almaviva,  dressed  as  a  student.'\ 

Count  [^solejnnly']  —  May  peace  and  joy  abide  here  evermore! 

Bartolo  [^brusquely]  —  Never,  young  sir,  was  wish  more  apro- 
pos !     What  do  you  want  ? 

Count — Sir,   I  am  one  Alonzo,  a  bachelor  of  arts  — 

Bartolo  —  Sir,  I  need  no  instructor. 

Count —  — a  pupil  of  Don  Basilio,  the  organist  of  the  con- 
vent, who  teaches  music  to  Madame  your  — 

Bartolo  [suspiciously']  —  Basilio!  Organist!  Yes,  I  know  him. 
Well? 

Count  [aside]  —  What  a  man!  [Aloud.]  He's  confined  to  his 
bed  with  a  sudden  illness. 

Bartolo  —  Confined  to  his  bed!  Basilio!  He's  very  good  to 
send  word,  for  I've  just  seen  him. 

Count  [aside]  —  Oh,  the  devil!  [Aloud.]  When  I  say  to  his 
bed,  sir,   it's —     I  mean  to  his  room. 

Bartolo  —  Whatever's  the  matter  with  him,  go,  if  you  please. 

Count  [embarrassed]  —  Sir,  I  was  asked —    Can  no  one  hear  us? 

Bartolo  [aside]  —  It's  some  rogue!  [Aloud.]  What's  that? 
No,  Monsieur  Mysterious,  no  one  can  hear!  Speak  frankly  —  if 
you  can. 

Count  [aside]  —  Plague  take  the  old  rascal!  [Aloud.]  Don 
Basilio  asked  me  to  tell  you  — 

Bartolo — Speak  louder.     I'm  deaf  in  one  ear. 

Count  [raising  his  voice]  —  Ah!  quite  right:  he  asks  me  to  say 
to  you  that  one  Count  Almaviva,  who  was  lodging  on  the  great 
square  — 

Bartolo  [frightened]  —  Speak  low,  speak  low. 

Count  [louder] —  — moved  away  from  there  this  morning. 
As  it  was  I  who  told  him  that  this  Count  Almaviva — 

Bartolo — Low,  speak  lower,  I  beg  of  you. 

Count  [in  the  same  tone]  —  Was  in  this  city,  and  as  I  have 
discovered  that  Seiiorita  Rosina  has  been  writing  to  him  — 


BEAUMARCHAIS  l66l 

Bartolo — Has  been  writing-  to  him?  My  dear  friend,  I  im- 
plore you,  do  speak  low!  Come,  let's  sit  down,  let's  have  a 
friendly  chat.     You  have  discovered,  you  say,   that  Rosina  — 

Count  \a)igrily\  —  Certainly.  Basilio,  anxious  about  this  cor- 
respondence on  your  account,  asked  me  to  show  you  her  letter; 
but  the  way  you  take  things  — 

Bartolo — Good  Lord!  I  take  them  well  enough.  But  can't 
you  possibly  speak   a  little  lower  ? 

Count  —  You   told   me  you  were   deaf  in   one   ear. 

Bartolo  —  I  beg  your  pardon,  I  beg  your  pardon,  if  I've  been 
surly  and  suspicious.  Signer  Alonzo:  I'm  surrounded  with  spies  — 
and  then  your  figure,  your  age,  your  whole  air —  I  beg  your 
pardon.     Well  ?     Have  you  the  letter  ? 

Count — I'm  glad  you're  barely  civil  at  last,  sir.  But  are  you 
quite  sure  no  one  can  overhear  us  ? 

Bartolo  —  Not  a  soul.  My  servants  are  all  tired  out.  Senorita 
Rosina  has  shut  herself  up  in  a  rage!  The  very  devil's  to  pay 
in  this  house.  Still  I'll  go  and  make  sure.  \^He  goes  to  peep 
into  Rosina' s  roo7u.] 

Count  [aside] — Well,  I've  caught  myself  now  in  my  own  trap. 
Now  what  shall  I  do  about  the  letter?  If  I  were  to  run  off?  — 
but  then  I  might  just  as  well  not  have  come.  Shall  I  show  it 
to  him  ?  If  I  could  only  warn  Rosina  beforehand !  To  show  it 
would  be  a  master-stroke. 

Bartolo  \returning  on  tiptoe]  —  She's  sitting  by  the  window 
with  her  back  to  the  door,  and  re-reading  a  cousin's  letter  which 
I  opened.     Now,  now  —  let  me  see  hers. 

Count  [handing  him  Rosina' s  letter]  —  Here  it  is.  [Aside.] 
She's  re-reading  my  letter. 

Bartolo  [reads  quickly]  — "  Since  you  have  told  me  your  name 
and  estate  — "     Ah,   the  little  traitress !     Yes,  it's  her  writing. 

Count  [frightened]  —  Speak  low  yourself,  won't  you? 

Bartdo  —  What  for,   if  you  please  ? 

Count  —  When  we've  finished,  you  can  do  as  you  choose.  But 
after  all,   Don  Basilio's  negotiation  with  a  lawyer  — 

Bartolo  —  With  a  lawyer?     About  my  marriage? 

Count — Would  I  have  stopped  you  for  anything  else  ?  He  told 
me  to  say  that  all  can  be  ready  to-morrow.    Then,  if  she  resists — 

Bartolo  —  She  will. 

Count  [wants  to  take  back  the  letter;  Bartolo  clutches  it]  — 
I'll    tell   you   what   we'll   do.     We  will  show  her  her  letter;   and 


j562  beaumarchais 

then,  if  necessary,  [more  viysteriously']  I'll  even  tell  her  that  it 
was  given  to  me  by  a  woman  —  to  whom  the  Count  is  sacrificing 
her.     Shame  and  rage  may  bring  her  to  terms  on  the  spot. 

Bar  tola  [laughing]  —  Calumny,  eh  ?  My  dear  fellow,  I  see  very 
well  now  that  you  come  from  Basilio.  But  lest  we  should  seem 
to  have  planned  this  together,  don't  you  think  it  would  be  better 
if  she'd  met  you  before  ? 

Count  [^repressing  a  start  of  Joy]  —  Don  Basilio  thought  so,  I 
know.  But  how  can  we  manage  it  ?  It  is  late  already.  There's 
not  much  time  left. 

Bartolo — I  will  tell  her  you've  come  in  his  place.  Couldn't 
you  give  her  a  lesson  ? 

Count — I'll  do  anything  you  like.  But  take  care  she  doesn't 
suspect.  All  these  dodges  of  pretended  masters  are  rather  old 
and  theatrical. 

Bartolo  —  She  won't  suspect  if  I  introduce  you.  But  how  you 
do  look !  You've  much  more  the  air  of  a  disguised  lover  than  of 
a  zealous  student-friend. 

Count — Really?  Don't  you  think  I  can  hoodwink  her  all  the 
better  for  that  ? 

Bartolo — She'll  never  guess.  She's  in  a  horrible  temper  this 
evening.  But  if  she'll  only  see  you —  Her  harpsichord  is  in  this 
room.  Amuse  yourself  while  you're  waiting.  I'll  do  all  I  can  to 
bring  her  here. 

Count  —  Don't  say  a  word  about  the  letter. 

Bartolo  — ^eiore  the  right  moment?  It  would  lose  all  effect 
if  I  did.  It's  not  necessary  to  tell  me  things  twice;  it's  not 
necessary  to  tell  me  things  twice.  [He  goes.] 

Count  [alojie,  soliloquizes]  —  At  last  I've  won!  Ouf!  What  a 
difficult  little  old  imp  he  is!  Figaro  understands  him.  I  found 
myself  lyi^g,  and  that  made  me  awkward;  and  he  has  eyes  for 
everything!  On  my  honor,  if  the  letter  hadn't  inspired  me  he'd 
have  thought  me  a  fool! —  Ah,  how  they  are  disputing  in  there!  — 
What  if  she  refuses  to  come?  Listen —  If  she  won't,  my  com- 
ing is  all  thrown  away.  There  she  is:  I  won't  show  myself  at 
first. 

{Rosina  enters.] 

Rosina  [angril)']  —  There's  no  use  talking  about  it,  sir.  I've 
made  up  my  mind.  I  don't  want  to  hear  anything  more  about 
music. 


BEAUMARCHAIS 


1663 


Bartolo — But,  my  child,  do  listen!  It  is  Senor  Alonzo,  the 
friend  and  pupil  of  Don  Basilio,  whom  he  has  chosen  as  one  of 
our  marriage  witnesses.      I'm  sure  that  music  will  calm  you. 

Rosina  —  Oh!  you  needn't  concern  yourself  about  that;  and 
as  for  singing  this  evening —  Where  is  this  master  you're  so 
afraid  of  dismissing?  I'll  settle  him  in  a  minute  —  and  Seiior 
Basilio  too.     {She  sees  her  lover  and  exclaivis .]     Ah ! 

Bartolo — Eh,   eh,   what  is  the  matter? 

Rosina  Impressing  her  hands  to  her  hearty  —  Ah,  sir!     Ah,  sir! 

Bartolo  —  She  is  ill  again!     Seiior  Alonzo! 

Rosina  —  No,   I  am  not  ill  —  but  as  I  was  turning  —  ah! 

Count  —  Did  you  sprain  your  foot,   Madame  ? 

Rosina  —  Yes,  yes,  I  sprained  my  foot !  I  —  hurt  myself  dread- 
fully. 

Count  —  So  I  perceived. 

Rosina  \looking  at  the  County  —  The  pain  really  makes  me  feel 
faint. 

Bartolo  —  A  chair  —  a  chair  there!  And  not  a  single  chair 
here!  \_He  goes  to  get  one.] 

Count  —  Ah,   Rosina! 

Rosina  —  What  imprudence ! 

Count  —  There  are  a  hundred  things  I  must  say  to  you. 

Rosina  —  He  won't  leave  us  alone. 

Count  —  Figaro  will  help  us. 

Bartolo  \bringing  an  arm-chair']  —  Wait  a  minute,  my  child. 
Sit  down  here.  She  can't  take  a  lesson  this  evening,  Seiior: 
you  must  postpone  it.     Good-by. 

Rosina  [to  the  Count]  —  No,  wait;  my  pain  is  better.  \To 
Bartolo.]  I  feel  that  I've  acted  foolishly!  I'll  imitate  you,  and 
atone  at  once  by  taking  my  lesson. 

Bartolo — Oh!  Such  a  kind  little  woman  at  heart!  But  after 
so  much  excitement,  my  child,  I  can't  let  you  make  any  exer- 
tion.    So  good-bye,   Seiior,  good-bye. 

Rosina  \to  the  Count]  —  Do  wait  a  minute!  [To  Bartolo.]  I 
shall  think  that  you  don't  care  to  please  me  if  you  won't  let  me 
show  my  regret  by  taking  my  lesson. 

Count  [aside  to  Bartolo]  —  I  wouldn't  oppose  her,  if  I  were  you. 

Bartolo  —  That  settles  it,  my  love:  I  am  so  anxious  to  please 
you  that  I  shall  stay  here  all  the  time  you  are  practicing. 

Rosina  —  No,  don't.     I  know  you  don't  care  for  music. 

Bariolo  —  It  will  charm  me  this  evening,  I'm  sure. 


i664 


BEAUMARCHAIS 


Rosina  [aside  to  the  Count]  —  I'm  tormented  to  death! 

Count  {taking  a  sJiect  of  music  from  the  stand]  — Will  you  sing 
this,   Madame  ? 

Kosina  —  Yes,  indeed  —  it's  a  very  pretty  thing  out  of  the 
opera  ^  The  Useless  Precaution.^ 

Bartolo  —  Why  do  you  always  sing  from  ^  The  Useless  Pre- 
caution *  ? 

Count  —  There  is  nothing  newer!  It's  a  picture  of  spring  in  a 
very  bright  style.      So  if  Madame  wants  to  try  it  — 

Rosina  {looking  at  the  Count] — With  pleasure.  A  picture  of 
spring  is  delightful!  It  is  the  youth  of  nature.  It  seems  as  if 
the  heart  always  feels  more  when  winter's  just  over.  It's  like  a 
slave  who  finds  liberty  all  the  more  charming  after  a  long  con- 
finement. 

Bartolo  {to  the  Count] — Always  romantic  ideas  in  her  head! 

Count  [in  a  low  to7ie]  —  Did  you  notice  the  application? 

Bartolo  —  Zounds ! 

{He  sits  do7vn  in  the  chair  which  Rosina  has  been  occupying.  Rosina  sings, 
during  which  Bartolo  goes  to  sleep.  Under  cover  of  the  refrain  the 
Count  seizes  Rosina  s  hand  and  covers  it  7vith  kisses.  In  her  emotion 
she  sings  brokenly,  and  finally  breaks  off  altogether.  The  sudden 
silence  awakens  Bartolo.  The  Count  starts  up,  and  Rosijia  quickly 
resumes  her  song.] 

•  •••••••• 

[Don  Basilio  enters.     Figaro  in  background.] 

Rosina  {startled.,  to  herself]  —  Don  Basilio ! 

Count  {aside]  —  Good  Heaven! 

Figaro  —  The  devil! 

Bartolo  {going  to  meet  him]  —  Ah!  welcome,  Basilio.  So  your 
accident  was  not  very  serious  ?  Alonzo  quite  alarmed  me  about 
you.  He  will  tell  you  that  I  was  just  going  to  see  you,  and  if 
he  had  not  detained  me  — 

Basilio  {in  astonishment]  —  Seiior  Alonzo  ? 

Figaro  {stamping  his  foot]  —  Well,  well!  How  long  must  I 
wait  ?  Two  hours  wasted  already  over  your  beard  —  Miserable 
business ! 

Basilio  {looking  at  every  one  in  amazement]  —  But,  gentlemen, 
will  you  please  tell  me  — 

Figaro  —  You  can  talk  to  him  after  I've  gone. 

Basilio  —  But  still,  would  — 


BEAUMARCHAIS 


1665 


Count  —  You'd  better  be  quiet,  Basilio.  Do  you  think  you 
can  inform  him  of  anything-  new  ?  I've  told  him  that  you  sent 
me  for  the  music  lesson  instead  of  coming  himself. 

Basilio  {still  more  asto7iished'\  —  The  music  lesson!     Alonzo! 

Rosina  [aside  to  Basilio]  —  Do  hold  your  tongue,  can't  you? 

Basilio — She,  too! 

Count  [to  Bartolo]  —  Let  him  know  what  you  and  I  have 
agreed  upon. 

Bartolo  [aside  to  Basilio]  —  Don't  contradict,  and  sa}^  that  he 
is  not  yoiir  pupil,  or  you  will  spoil  everything. 

Basilio  —  Ah!     Ah! 

Bartolo  [aloud]  —  Indeed,  Basilio,  your  pupil  has  a  great  deal 
of  talent. 

Basilio  [sttipefied]  —  My  pupil!  [In  a  low  tone.]  I  came  to 
tell  you  that  the  Count  has  moved. 

Bartolo  [lo%i^  —  I  know  it.     Hush. 

Basilio  [low]  —  Who  told  you  ? 

Bartolo  [lozv]  —  He  did,  of  course. 

Count  [lozv]  —  It  was  I,  naturally.     Just  listen,  won't  you? 

Rosina  [low  to  Basilio]  —  Is  it  so  hard  to  keep  still? 

Figaro  [low  to  Basilio]  —  Hum!     The  sharper!     He  is  deaf! 

Basilio  [aside]  —  Who  the  devil  are  they  trying  to  deceive 
here  ?     Everj^body  seems  to  be  in  it ! 

Bartolo  [aloud] — Well,   Basilio  —  about  your  lawyer — ? 

Figaro  —  You  have  the  whole  evening  to  talk  about  the 
lawyer. 

•     Bartolo  [to  Basilio]  —  One  word ;    only  tell  me  if  you  are  sat- 
isfied with  the  lawyer. 

Basilio  [startled]  —  With  the  lawyer  ? 

Count  [smiling]  —  Haven't  you  seen  the  lawyer? 

Basilio  [impatient]  —  Eh  ?     No,  I  haven't  seen  the  lawyer. 

Count  [aside  to  Bartolo]  —  Do  you  want  him  to  explain  matters 
before  her  ?     Send  him  away. 

Bartolo  [lozv  to  t/ie  Count]  —  You  are  right.  [To  Basilio.]  But 
what  made  you  ill,   all  of  a  sudden  ? 

Basilio  [angrilj]  —  I  don't  understand  you. 

Count  [secretly  slipping  a  purse  into  his  hands]  —  Yes:  he 
wants  to  know  what  you  are  doing  here,  when  you  are  so  far 
from  well  ? 

Figaro — He's  as  pale  as  a  ghost! 

Basilio  —  Ah!    I  understand, 
in— 105 


1 666  BEAUMARCHAIS 

Cou7it  —  Go  to  bed,  dear  Basilio.  You  are  not  at  all  well,  and 
you  make  us  all  anxious.     Go  to  bed. 

Figaro — He  looks  quite  upset.     Go  to  bed. 

Bartolo  —  I'm  sure  he  seems  feverish.     Go  to  bed. 

Rosina  —  Why  did  you  come  out?  They  say  that  it's  catching. 
Go  to  bed. 

Basilio  \in  the  greatest  a7nazement'\  —  I'm  to  go  to  bed! 

All  the  others  together  —  Yes,  you  must. 

Basilio  Rooking  at  them  all]  —  Indeed,  I  think  I  will  have  to 
withdraw.     I  don't  feel  quite  as  well  as  usual. 

Bartolo  —  We'll  look  for  you  to-morrow,  if  you  are  better. 

Count  —  I'll  see  you  soon,  Basilio. 

Basilio  \aside]  —  Devil  take  it  if  I  understand  all  this !  And 
if  it  weren't  for  this  purse  — 

All — Good -night,  Basilio,  good-night. 

Basilio  {^going]  —  Very  well,  then ;    good-night,  good-night. 

{The  others,  all  laughing,  push  him  civilly  out  of  the  room.] 

FROM    <THE  MARRIAGE   OF   FIGARO  > 
Outwitting  a  Husband 

[The  scene  is  the  boudoir  of  young  Countess  Almaviva,  the  Rosina  oi  lue 
previous  selection.  She  is  seated  alone,  when  her  clever  maid  Susanna 
ushers  in  the  young  page  Cherubino,  just  banished  from  the  house  because 
obnoxious  to  the  jealous  Count.] 

Susanna  —  Here's  our  young  Captain,   Madame. 

Cherubino  \tiviidl)'\  —  The  title  is  a  sad  reminder  that  —  that 
I  must  leave  this  delightful  home  and  the  godmother  who  has 
been  so  kind  — 

Snsa7ina  —  And  so  beautiful! 

Cherubino  {sighing]  —  Ah,   yes! 

Susanna  \inocking  his  sigh] — Ah,  yes!  Just  look  at  his  hypo- 
critical eyelids!  Madame,  make  him  sing  his  new  song.  [^7;^ 
gives  it  to  hint.]     Come  now,  my  beautiful  bluebird,  sing  away. 

Countess  —  Docs  the  manuscript  say  who  wrote  this  —  song? 

Susanna  —  The  blushes  of  guilt  betray  him. 

Cherubino — Madame,   I  —  I  —  tremble  so. 

Susanna  —  Ta,  ta,  ta,  ta —  !  Come,  modest  author  —  since  you 
are  so  commanded.     Madame,   I'll  accompany  him. 

Countess  [to  Susanna]  —  Take  my  guitar. 


BEAUMARCHAIS 


1667 


[  Cherubino  sings  his  ballad  to  the  air  of  ^  Malbrouck.  *  The  Countess  reads 
the  words  of  it  from  his  manuscript,  with  an  occasional  glance  at 
him;  he  sometimes  looks  at  her  and  sometimes  lowers  his  eyes  as  he 
sings.     Susanna,  acco77ipanying  him,  watches  them  both,  laughing. ^ 

Countess  \ folding  the  song]  —  Enough,  my  boy.  Thank  you. 
It  is  very  good  —  full  of  feeling  — 

Susa)ma  —  Ah!  as  for  feeling  —  this  is  a  young  man  who  — 
well! 

{(Cherubino  tries  to  stop  her  by  catching  hold  of  her  dress. 
Susanna  zvJiispers  to  hiiii\  —  Ah,  you  good-for-nothing!  I'm  going 
to  tell  her.  [Aloud-.]  Well  —  Captain!  We'll  amuse  ourselves  by 
seeing  how  you  look  in  one  of  my  dresses! 

Countess — Susanna,  how  ca7t  you  go  on  so? 

Susanna  [going  up  to  Cherubino  and  measuring  herself  with 
hint]  —  He's  just  the  right  height.  Off  with  your  coat.  [She 
dratvs  it  off.] 

Countess — But  what  if  some  one  should  come? 

Susanna  —  What  if  they  do?  We're  doing  no  wrong.  But 
I'll  lock  the  door,  just  the  same.  [Locks  it.]  I  want  to  see  him 
in  a  woman's  head-dress! 

Countess  —  Well,  you'll  find  my  little  cap  in  my  dressing-room 
on  the  toilet  table. 

[Susanna  gets  the  cap,  and  then,  sitting  down  on  a  stool,  she  makes  Cheru- 
bino kneel  before  her  and  arra?iges  it  on  his  hair.] 

Susanna  —  Goodness,  isn't  he  a  pretty  girl?  I'm  jealous. 
Cherubino,  you're  altogether  too  pretty. 

Countess  —  Undo  his  collar  a  little;  that  will  give  a  more 
feminine  air.  [Susanna  loosens  his  collar  so  as  to  shozu  his  neck.] 
Now  push  up  his  sleeves,  so  that  the  under  ones  show  more. 
\While  Susanna  rolls  up  Cherubino'' s  sleeves.,  the  Countess  notices 
her   lost  ribbon   around  his  wrist.]     What   is   that?     My  ribbon? 

Susanna  —  Ah!  I'm  very  glad  you've  seen  it,  for  I  told  him 
I  should  tell.  I  should  certainly  have  taken  it  away  from  him 
if  the  Count  hadn't  come  just  then;  for  I  am  almost  as  strong 
as  he  is. 

Countess  [with  surprise^  unrolling  the  ribbon]  —  There's  blood 
on  it! 

Cherubino  —  Yes,  I  was  tightening  the  curb  of  my  horse  this 
morning  he  curvetted  and  gave  me  a  push  with  his  head,  and 
the  bridle  stud  grazed  my  arm. 


1 668  BEAUMARCHAIS 

Countess — I  never  saw  a  ribbon  used  as  a  bandage  before. 

Susanna  —  Especially  a  stolen  ribbon.  What  may  all  those 
things  be  —  the  curb,  the  curvetting,  the  bridle  stud?  [Glances 
at  his  arms.]  What  white  arms  he  has!  just  like  a  woman's. 
Madame,  they  are  whiter  than  mine. 

Countess  —  Never  mind  that,  but  run  and  find  me  some  oiled 
silk. 

{Susanna  goes  out,  after  humorously  pushing  Cherubino  oi'er  so  that  he 
falls  forward  on  his  hands.  He  and  the  Countess  look  at  each 
other  for  some  time;  then  she  breaks  the  silence.  J 

Countess — I  hope  you  are  plucky  enough.'  Don't  show  your- 
self before  the  Count  again  to-day.  We'll  tell  him  to  hurry  up 
your  commission  in  his  regiment. 

Cherubino — I  already  have  it,  Madame.  Basilio  brought  it 
to  me.  [He  drazvs  the  commission  from  his  pocket  and  /lands  it 
to  her.] 

Countess  —  Already!  They  haven't  lost  any  time.  [She  opens 
it.]     Oh,  in  their  hurry  they've  forgotten  to  add  the  seal  to  it. 

Susanna  [returning  with  the  oiled  silk]  —  Seal  what? 

Countess  —  His  commission  in  the  regiment, 

Susanna  —  Already  ? 

Countess — That's  what  I  said. 

Susanna  —  And  the  bandage? 

Countess — Oh,  when  you  are  getting  my  things,  take  a  ribbon 
from  one  of  your  caps.      [Susanna  goes  out  again.] 

Countess  —  This  ribbon  is  of  my  favorite  color.  I  must  tell 
you  I  was  greatly  displeased  at  your  taking  it. 

Cherubino  —  That  one  would  heal  me  quickest. 

Countess — And  —  why  so  ? 

Cherubino  —  When  a  ribbon  —  has  pressed  the  head,  and  — 
touched  the  skin  of  one  — 

Countess  [hastily]  —  Very  strange  —  then  it  can  cure  wounds? 
I  never  heard  that  before.  I  shall  certainly  try  it  on  the  first 
wound  of  any  of — my  maids  — 

Cherubino  [sadly]  —  I  must  go  away  from  here! 

Countess — But  not  for  always?  [Cherubino  begins  to  tveep.] 
And  now  you  are  crying!     At  that  prediction  of  Figaro? 

Cherubino  —  I'm  just  where  he  said  I'd  be.  [Some  one  knocks 
on  the  door]. 


BEAUMARCHAIS 


1669 


Countess  —  Who  can  be  knocking  like  that? 

The  Count  [outside'] — Open  the  door! 

Countess — Heavens!     It's  my  husband.     Where  can  you  hide? 

The  Count  [outside]  —  Open  the  door,  I  say. 

Countess  —  There's  no  one  here,  you  see. 

The  Count — But  who  are  you  talking  to  then? 

Countess  —  To  you,  I  suppose.  [To  Cherubino.]  Hide  your- 
self,  quick  —  in  the  dressing-room ! 

Cherubino  —  Ah,  after  this  morning,  he'd  kill  me  if  he  found 
me  here. 

[Jfe  runs  into  the  dressifjg-room  on  the  right,  which  is  also  Siisanna^s 
room  ;  the  Countess,  after  locking  him  in  and  taking  the  key,  admits  the 
Count.  ] 

Count  —  You  don't  usually  lock  yourself  in,   Madame. 

Countess  —  I  —  I  —  was  gossiping  with  Susanna.  She's  gone. 
[Pointing  to  her  maid's  room.] 

Count  —  And  you  seem  very  much  agitated,   Madame. 

Countess  —  Not  at  all,  I  assure  you!  We  were  talking  about 
you.     She's  just  gone — as  I  told  you. 

Count  —  I  must  say,  Madame,  you  and  I  seem  to  be  sur- 
rounded by  spiteful  people.  Just  as  I'm  starting  for  a  ride,  I'm 
handed  a  note  which  informs  me  that  a  certain  person  whom 
I  suppose  far  enough  away  is  to  visit  you  this  evening. 

Countess — The  bold  fellow,  whoever  he  is,  will  have  to  come 
here,  then;   for  I  don't  intend  to  leave  my  room  to-day. 

[Something  falls  heavily  in  the  dressing-room  where  Cherubino  is.] 

Count  —  Ah,   Madame,   something  dropped  just  then! 

Countess  —  I  didn't  hear  anything. 

Count  —  You  must  be  very  absent-minded,  then.  Somebody 
is  in  that  room ! 

Countess — Who  do  you  think  could  be  there? 

Count  —  Madame,  that  is  what  I'm  asking  you.  I  have  just 
come   in. 

Countess — Probably  it's  Susanna  wandering  about. 

Count  [pointing]  —  But  you  just  told  me  that  she  went  that 
way. 

Countess  —  This  way  or  that  —  I  don't  know  which. 

Count  —  Very  well,  Madame,  I  must  see  her. —  Come  here, 
Susanna. 


1670  BEAUMARCHAIS 

CoiDitcss — She  cannot.  Pray  wait!  She's  but  half  dressed. 
She's  trj'ing  on  things  that  I've  given  her  for  her  wedding. 

Count  —  Dressed  or  not,  I  wish  to  see  her  at  once. 

Countess — I  can't  prevent  your  doing  so  anywhere  else,  but 
here  — 

Count  —  You  may  say  what  you  choose  —  I  will  see  her. 

Countess — I  thoroughly  believe  you'd  like  to  see  her  in  that 
state!  but  — 

Count  —  Very  well,  Madame.  If  Susanna  can't  come  out,  at 
least  she  can  talk.  S^Turning  toivarel  the  dressing-room.^  Su- 
sanna, are  you  there  ?     Answer,   I  command  you. 

Countess  \_pereviptorily'\  —  Don't  answer,  Susanna!  I  forbid 
you !  Sir,  how  can  you  be  such  a  petty  tyrant  ?  Fine  suspicions, 
indeed ! 

[Susanna  slips  by  and  hides  behind  the  Countess's  bed  without  being'  noticed 
either  by  her  or  by  the  Count. \ 

Count  —  They  are  all  the  easier  to  dispel.  I  can  see  that  it 
would  be  useless  to  ask  you  for  the  key,  but  it's  easy  enough 
to  break  in  the  door.     Here,   somebody! 

Countess  —  Will  you  really  make  yourself  the  laughing-stock  of 
the  chateau  for  such  a  silly  suspicion  ? 

Count — You  are  quite  right.  I  shall  simply  force  the  door 
myself.     I  am  going  for  tools. 

Countess — Sir,  if  your  conduct  were  prompted  by  love,  I'd 
forgive  your  jealousy  for  the  sake  of  the  motive.  But  its  cause 
is  only  your  vanity. 

Count — Love  or  vanity,  Madame,  I  mean  to  know  who  is  in 
that  room!  And  to  guard  against  any  tricks,  I  am  going  to  lock 
the  door  to  your  maid's  room.  You,  INIadame,  will  kindly  come 
with  me,  and  without  any  noise,  if  you  please.  [He  leads  her 
away.]  As  for  the  Susanna  in  the  dressing-room,  she  will  please 
wait  a  few  minutes. 

Countess  [going  out  with  hini\  —  Sir,  I  assure  you  — 

Susanna  [coming  out  from  behind  the  bed  and  running  to  the 
dressing-room]  —  Cherubino!  Open  quick!  It's  Susanna.  [Cheru- 
bino  hurries  out  of  the  dressing-room.']  Escape  —  you  haven't  a 
minute  to  lose ! 

Cherubino  —  Where  can  I  go  ? 


BEAUMARCHAIS 


1671 


Susanna  —  I  don't  know,  I  don't  know  at  all!  but  do  go  some- 
where ! 

Cherubino  \rtinning  to  the  windozv,  then  coming  daek]  —  The 
window  isn't  so  very  high. 

Susanna  \^frigJitened  and  Jiolding  him  back'\  —  He'll  kill  himself! 
Cherubino  —  Ah,  Susie,  I'd  rather  jump  into  a  gfulf  than  put  the 
Countess  in  danger.  [//r  snatches  a  kiss,  then  7'nns  to  the  win- 
doiv,  hesitates,  and  finally  jumps  dozvn  into  the  gar  den. \ 

Susanna  —  Ah!  [She  falls  fainting  into  an  arm-chair.  RecoV' 
ering  slozvly,  she  rises,  and  seeing  Clieriibino  running  through  the 
garden  she  comes  forzvard panting. ^  He's  far  away  already!  .  .  . 
Little  scamp !  as  nimble  as  he  is  handsome !  \She  next  runs  to 
the  dressing-room.']  Now,  Count  Almaviva,  knock  as  hard  as  you 
like,  break  down  the  door.  Plague  take  me  if  I  answer  you. 
[^Goes  into  the  dressing-room  and  shuts  the  door.^ 

[Count  and  Countess  return.'] 

Count — Now,  Madame,  consider  well  before  you  drive  me  to 
extremes. 

Countess  —  I  —  I  beg  of  you  — ! 

Count  \_preparing  to  burst  open  the  door]  —  You  can't  cajole 
me  now. 

Countess  [throzving  herself  on  her  hiees]  —  Then  I  will  open 
it!     Here  is  the  key. 

Count — So  it  is  not  Susanna? 

Countess  —  No,  but  it's  no  one  who  should  offend  you. 

Count — If  it's  a  man  I  kill  him!  Unworthy  wife!  You 
wisn  to  stay  shut  up  in  your  room  —  you  shall  stay  in  it  long 
enough,  I  promise  you.  Nozv  I  understand  the  note  —  my  sus- 
picions are  justified! 

Countess  —  Will  you  listen  to  me  one  minute.? 

Count  —  Who  is  in   that  room  ? 

Countess  —  Your  page. 

Count — Cherubino!  The  little  scoundrel! — just  let  me  catch 
him!     I  don't  wonder  you  were  so  agitated. 

Countess — I  —  I  assure  you  we  were  only  planning  an  inno- 
cent joke. 

\The    Count   snatches   the   key,    and  goes   to   the   dressing-room   door;   the 
Coujitess  throws  herself  at  his  feet.  ] 

Countess  —  Have  mercy,  Coimt!  Spare  this  poor  child;  and 
although  the  disorder  in  which  you  will  find  him  — 


A 


1672  BEAUMARCHAIS 

Count  —  What,  Madame  ?   What  do  you  mean  ?   What  disorder  ? 
Countess — He  was  just  changing  his  coat — his  neck  and  arms 
are  bare — 

[  The  Countess  thnnvs  herself  info  a  ehair  and  turns  away  her  head.  ] 

Count  \running  to  the  dressing-rooni'\  —  Come  out  here,  you 
young  villain! 

Count  {seeing  Susanna  come  out  of  the  dresshig-rooni]  —  Eh! 
Why,  it  is  Susanna!     {Aside.']     What,  a  lesson! 

Susanna  \_niocking  ]iini\  — *<  I  will  kill  him !  I  will  kill  him !  » 
Well,   then,  why  don't  you  kill  this  mischievous  page  ? 

Count  [to  the  Countess,  who  at  the  sight  of  Susanna  shozvs  the 
greatest  surprise]  —  So  you  also  play  astonishment,  Madame  ? 

Coutttess  —  Why  shouldn't  I  ? 

Count  —  But  perhaps  she  wasn't  alone  in  there.  I'll  find  out, 
{He  goes  into  the  dressing-room.] 

Countess  —  Susanna,   I'm  nearly  dead. 

Count-  [aside,  as  he  returns]  —  No  one  there!  So  this  time  I 
really  am  wrong.  [To  the  Countess,  coldly.]  You  excel  at  com- 
edy, Madame. 

Susanna  —  And  what  about  me,  sir  ? 

Count  —  And  so  do  you. 

Countess  —  Aren't  you  glad  you  found  her  instead  of  Cheru- 
bino  ?    {Meaningly^    You  are  generally  pleased  to  come  across  her. 

Susanna  —  Madame  ought  to  have  let  you  break  in  the  doors, 
call  the  servants  — 

Count  —  Yes,  it's  quite  true  —  I'm  at  fault  —  I'm  himiiliated 
enough!  But  why  didn't  you  answer,  you  cruel  girl,  when  I 
called   you  ? 

Susanna  —  I  was  dressing  as  well  as  I  could  —  with  the  aid  ol 
pins,  and  Madame  knew  why  she  forbade  me  to  answer.  She 
had  her  lessons. 

Count  —  Why  don't  you  help  me  get  pardon,  instead  of  mak- 
ing me  out  as  bad  as  you  can  ? 

Countess — Did  I  marry  you  to  be  eternally  subjected  to  jeal- 
ousy and  neglect?     I  mean  to  join  the  Ursulines,  and  — 

Count  —  But,   Rosina! 

Countess  —  I  am  no  longer  the  Rosina  whom  you  loved  so 
well.  I  am  only  poor  Countess  Almaviva,  deserted  wife  of  a 
madly  jealous  husband. 


BEAUMARCHAIS 


1673 


Count  —  I  assure  you,  Rosina,  this  man,  this  letter,  had 
excited  me  so  — 

Countess  —  I  never  gave  my  consent. 

Count  —  What,   you  knew  about  it  ? 

Countess  —  This  rattlepate  Figaro,   without  my  sanction — • 

Count — He  did  it,  eh!  and  Basilio  pretended  that  a  peasant 
brought  it.      Crafty  wag,  ready  to  impose  on   everybody! 

Countess  —  You  beg  pardon,  but  you  never  grant  pardon.  If 
I  grant  it,   it  shall  only  be  on  condition  of  a  general  amnesty. 

Count  —  Well,  then,  so  be  it.  I  agree.  But  I  don't  under- 
stand how  your  sex  can  adapt  itself  to  circumstances  so  quickly 
and  so  nicely.  You  were  certainly  much  agitated;  and  for  that 
matter,  you  are  yet. 

Countess  —  Men  aren't  sharp  enough  to  distinguish  between 
honest  indignation  at  unjust  suspicion,  and  the  confusion  of  guilt. 

Count — We  men  think  we  know  something  of  politics,  but 
we  are  only  children.  Madame,  the  King  ought  to  name  you 
his  ambassador  to  London. —  And  now  pray  forget  this  unfor- 
tunate business,   so  humiliating  for  me. 

Coujttess  —  For  us  both. 

Count  —  Won't  you  tell  me  again  that  you  forgive  me? 

Countess — Have  I  said  tJiat^   Susanna? 

Count  —  Ah,   say  it  now. 

Countess  —  Do  you  deserve  it,   culprit  ? 

Count  —  Yes,  honestly,  for  my  repentance. 

Countess  \^giving  him  her  hand']  —  How  weak  I  am!  What  an 
example  I  set  you,  Susanna!  He'll  never  believe  in  a  woman's 
anger. 

Susanna  —  You  are  prisoner  on  parole;  and  you  shall  see  we 
are  honorable. 


1674 


FRANCIS  BEAUMONT  AND  JOHN  FLETCHER 
(15S4-1616)  (1579-1625) 

BY  ASHLEY  H.    THORNDIKE 

JUERE  is  a  great  deal  that  is  extraordinary  and  almost  nothing 
that  is  commonplace  in  the  literary  history  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher.  Just  at  the  time  that  the  Elizabethan  drama  was 
at  its  zenith,  when  Jonson  and  Chapman  and  Heywood  and  Dekker 
were  at  their  best,  when  the  London  public  was  witnessing  the  first 
performances  of  (Othello  >  and  (Lear,)  two  young  poets  made  their  way 
on  the  scene.  They  soon  united  in  a  close  friendship  and  began  to 
produce  in  collaboration  a  series  of  plays,  distinguished  at  once  by  great 
theatrical  effectiveness  and  by  the  appeal  of  their  poetry.  The  young 
dramatists  fascinated  both  the  groundlings  of  the  pit  and  the  courtiers 
in  the  boxes,  both  the  crowd  and  the  critics,  both  playgoers  and  readers. 
It  seems  clear  that  they  outdid  Shakespeare  in  immediate  popularity 
on  the  stage,  and  they  at  once  took  a  leading  part  in  those  assemblies  of 
the  poets  and  wits  at  the  Mermaid  Tavern,  already  notable  for  the 
contests  between  Jonson  and  Shakespeare. 

When,  little  more  than  half-a-dozen  years  after  his  first  appearance 
as  a  dramatist,  Beaumont  retired  from  the  stage,  no  one's  fame  seemed 
more  secure.  No  play  had  appeared  in  print  with  his  name,  but  the 
court  and  theatres  were  ringing  with  his  applause,  and  the  poets  were 
uniting  to  praise  him.  He  died  when  barely  thirty,  in  the  same  year  as 
Shakespeare,  and  a  contemporary  epigram  adjures  Chaucer,  Spenser, 
and  Beaumont  to  lie  a  little  closer 

«to  make  room 
For  Shakespeare  in  your  threefold,  fourfold  tomb.)> 

After  Beaumont's  retirement  Fletcher  collaborated  with  Shakespeare 
on  (Henry  VIH.)  and  the  (  Two  Noble  Kinsmen >  and  succeeded  Shake- 
speare as  the  chief  writer  for  the  King's  company  of  players.  For  the 
next  dozen  years  he  was  unquestionably  the  king  of  the  theatres.  Play 
after  play  came  from  his  facile  pen,  now  often  in  collaboration  with 
Massinger  or  another,  and  added  to  his  long  list  of  dramatic  successes. 

The  young  writers  imitated  his  style  and  dramatic  methods.  No 
one  except  the  Puritans  thought  of  offering  a  censure.  Because  of  his 
deficiency  in  moral  and  artistic  earnestness,  however,  modern  critics 
have  usually  debited  him  with  marking  the  decline  of  the  drama.  The 
drama,  indeed,   was   bound   to  decline  from   the   high   estate  to   which 


FRANCIS    BEAUMONT    AND    JOHN    FLETCHER  1675 

Shakespeare  had  raised  it;  but  the  decline  was  by  no  means  a  mere 
deterioration.  Fletcher  helped  to  give  the  drama  a  new  direction,  but 
still  preserved  it  as  a  vehicle  for  poetry,  fancy,  and  wit.  In  the  general 
development,  or  decline,  from  Shakespeare  to  Dryden,  Otway,  and 
Congreve,  he  was  at  all  events  the  leading  figure.  Jonson  and  Shake- 
speare were  still  great  influences,  inspiring  or  overshadowing  the  efforts 
of  the  younger  man;  but,  for  bad  and  good,  the  dominating  force  in  the 
drama  from  1616  to  1642  was  Fletcher. 

When  at  the  restoration  of  Charles  II.,  the  theatres  were  reopened, 
the  plays  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  were  again  the  favorites  and  again 
stimulated  the  invention  and  wit  of  contemporary  dramatists.  The 
tragedies  of  Shakespeare  and  a  few  of  the  comedies  of  Jonson  were 
almost  their  only  rivals  in  carrying  on  the  great  Elizabethan  traditions 
across  the  break  made  by  the  Commonwealth,  over  to  a  new  generation 
of  theatregoers.  Collected  editions  of  their  plays  made  them  familiar 
to  readers  and  for  a  time  they  held  their  own  with  their  great  contem- 
porary, even  in  the  opinion  of  the  judicious.  Dryden  sums  up  the 
judgment  of  his  day  in  the  famous  criticism  which  finds  them  worthy  of 
comparison  with  Jonson  and  Shakespeare. 

But  this  new  glory  was  short  lived.  One  by  one  their  plays  ceased 
to  please  upon  the  stage.  By  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century 
there  was  a  new  taste  in  poetry  which  did  not  relish  their  extravagance 
and  a  new  strictness  in  morality  which  frowned  on  their  wit.  Their 
romances  came  to  be  acted  only  rarely,  though  a  few  of  their  comedies 
kept  the  stage  well  into  the  nineteenth  century. 

In  the  closet  as  on  the  stage  they  could  not  bear  comparison  with 
Shakespeare,  but  they  did  not  lack  readers.  Their  plays  have  been 
continually  re-edited,  and  they  shared  in  the  fervor  of  appreciation  which 
the  Elizabethan  drama  received  from  Lamb,  Leigh  Hunt,  and  other  of 
the  romanticists.  The  fine  edition  of  their  works  by  Dyce  in  the  middle 
of  the  nineteenth  century  placed  them  on  the  library  shelves  of  all  lovers 
of  literature;  and  the  twentieth  century  has  already  seen  two  new 
variorum  editions  and  many  reprints  of  individual  plays. 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher  were  men  of  the  theatre  and  they  secured 
immediate  and  long-continued  vogue  on  the  stage.  They  took  the 
theatres  by  storm  as  did  Kotzebue,  Scribe,  or  Sardou.  But  they  were 
also  poets  who  have  delighted  generation  after  generation.  They  are 
very  vulnerable  to  serious  assault  by  either  moralist,  realist,  or  drama- 
turgist; but  they  are  nevertheless  very  readable.  They  do  not  represent 
the  best  and  greatest  in  the  thought  and  feeling  of  their  own  age,  and 
they  offer  no  profound  criticism  on  life  to  arouse  the  reflection  of  the 
present.  But  he  who  reads  for  wit,  for  fancy,  for  verse  that  can  mirror 
the  play  of  varying  sentiment  and  passion,  will  find  their  colors  but  little 
dimmed  by  time  and  their  jewels  still  sparkling  brilliantly.     Perhaps  no 


1676  FRANCIS    BEAUMONT    AND    JOHN    FLETCHER 

poetical  drama,  clearly  not  of  the  first  rank,  has  withstood  changes  of 
time  and  taste  better  than  the  product  of  this  famous  collaboration. 

During  their  lifetimes  no  attempt  was  made  to  separate  the  work  of 
the  two  collaborators.  That  task  was  left  to  modern  criticism  and  has 
engaged  the  labors  of  many  scholars.  Fletcher's  blank  verse  is  marked 
by  very  definite  mannerisms,  especially  the  unprecedented  combination 
of  a  very  large  proportion  of  double  or  feminine  endings  with  an  almost 
equally  large  proportion  of  end  stopt  lines.  These  traits  render  its 
cadences  easily  recognizable  to  any  one  familiar  with  Elizabethan  verse 
and  also  susceptible  of  analysis  by  verse  tests.  His  share  in  the  plays 
collected  under  the  names  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  has  now  been  rather 
closely  defined.  The  share  of  Massinger  who  collaborated  with  Fletcher  in 
many  of  the  later  plays  can  also  be  set  off  with  some  distinctness  because 
of  the  contrast  which  it  offers  to  the  distinctively  Fletcherian  portions. 

Of  the  two  chief  collaborators,  Beaumont's  is  a  somewhat  shadowy 
figure.  There  is  no  single  play  that  can  be  indisputably  assigned  to  his 
sole  authorship,  and  probably  only  about  a  dozen  plays  in  which  he  had 
any  part.  In  consequence  we  are  far  from  having  any  sure  canon  by 
which  to  judge  of  his  qualities  of  style  and  invention.  Modern  criticism, 
however,  has  been  eager  and  acute  in  its  attempts  to  define  and  value 
both  his  personality  and  his  poetry.  The  difficulty  with  such  analysis 
is  that  it  must  rest  on  a  negative  basis,  and  Beaumont  is  made  the 
opposite  and  the  negation  of  Fletcher.  IMoreover,  Fletcher  exhibits  his 
faults  so  openly,  that  there  is  a  temiptation  to  assign  all  the  opposite 
virtues  to  his  collaborator.  Beaumont  is  held  to  be  graver,  more 
critical,  more  moral,  more  Shakespearian;  but  the  comparatives  cannot  be 
said  to  result  in  any  very  positive  definition.  Both  men  were  in  the 
twenties  when  they  began  their  collaboration,  which  is  marked  by  an 
audacity' and  prodigality  of  talent.  About  all  that  can  be  said  surely  of 
Beaumont  is  that  he  had  a  large  share  in  the  few  plays  that  must  be 
ranked  as  the  masterpieces  of  their  collaboration. 

Apart  from  their  plays,  there  are  few  records  of  the  lives  of  the  two 
dramatists,  and  these  may  be  briefly  summarized. 

Francis  Beaumont,  third  son  of  Sir  Francis  Beaumont  of  Grace 
Dicu  in  Leicestershire,  one  of  the  Justices  of  Common  Pleas,  was  born 
about  1584  and  died  March  6th,  1616.  He  was  admitted  gentleman 
commoner  at  Broadgates  Hall,  Oxford,  in  1597,  and  was  entered  at  the 
Inner  Temple,  London,  November  3d,  1600.  In  addition  to  his  plays, 
very  little  of  his  writing  has  survived.  His  <Masque  of  the  Inner  Temple 
was  given  an  elaborate  performance  on  March  ist,  1613;  and  Beaumont 
seems  to  have  ceased  writing  for  the  public  theatres  before  that  date. 
He  was  married  to  Ursula,  daughter  of  Henry  Isley  of  Sundridge,  Kent, 
probably  in  1613,  and  left  two  daughters  (one  a  posthumous  child). 
He  was  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey. 


FRANCIS    BEAUMONT    AND    JOHN    FLETCHER  1677 

John  Fletcher,  son  of  Richard  Fletcher,  Bishop  of  London,  was 
baptized  at  Rye  in  Sussex,  where  his  father  was  then  minister,  December 
20th,  1579,  and  died  of  the  plague  in  August,  1625.  He  was  entered  as  a 
pensioner  at  Benedict  College,  Cambridge,  1591.  His  father  as  Dean  of 
Peterborough  attended  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  at  Fotheringay,  and  was 
later  rapidly  promoted  to  the  sees  of  Bristol,  Worcester,  and  London. 
Handsome  of  person  and  eloquent  of  speech,  he  was  a  successful  courtier 
and  a  favorite  of  the  Queen,  though  he  suffered  a  loss  of  favor  shortly 
before  his  death  in  1596.  The  dramatist  received  by  bequest  a  share 
in  his  father's  books,  but  apparently  little  other  property.  Frequent 
references  to  his  poetry  occur  in  contemporary  plays  and  verses,  but 
very  little  information  has  survived  concerning  his  personality  or 
circumstances.  He  was  evidently  busily  occupied  in  writing  for  the 
theatres  for  some  twenty  years.  He  was  buried  August  29th,  1625,  in 
Saint  Saviour's,  Southwark. 

The  following  list  gives  all  the  plays  in  which  either  Beaumont  or 
Fletcher  had  a  part.  They  are  arranged  in  groups  and  in  a  conjecturally 
chronological  order,  the  exact  dates  of  performance  being  rarely  deter- 
minable. Beaumont's  share  is  confined  largely  to  the  first  group. 
Fletcher  had  a  share  in  all  the  plays  of  the  second  and  third  groups. 
The  initials  indicate  some  of  the  surer  ascriptions  to  Beaumont,  Fletcher, 
Massinger,  and  Shakespeare. 

First  Period 

Woman's  Prize;  or.  The  Tamer  Tamed.      F.  1604? 

Wit  at  Several  Weapons.      First  version.  1605? 

The  Woman  Hater.     B.                                                   .  1606? 

Love's  Cure,  or.  The  Martial  Maid.  1606? 

Thierry  and  Theodoret.  1607? 

Monsieur  Thomas.     F.  1607-8? 

The  Knight  of  the  Burning  Pestle.     B.  1607-8? 

Four  Plays  in  One.      B.  and  F.  1608? 

The  Faithful  Shepherdess.     F.  1608? 

Philaster;  or,  Love  lies  a-bleeding.     B.  and  F.  1608? 

The  Coxcomb.  1609? 

The  Maid's  Tragedy.     B.  and  F.  1609? 

Cupid's  Revenge.      B.  and  F.  1609-10? 

The  Scornful  Lady.     B.  and  F.  1610-11? 

A  King  and  No  King.      B.  and  F.  161 1 

The  Captain.  161 1? 

Second  Period 

The  Nice  Valour;  or.  The  Passionate  Madman.  161 2?? 

The  Night  Walker;  or,  the  Little  Thief  161 2?? 


1678  FR.VNCIS    BEAUMONT    AND    JOHN    FLETCHER 

The  Beggar's  Bush.  161 2?? 

Cardenio.      (non-extant)  161 2-13?? 

The  Mask  of  the  Inner  Temple.      B.  161 2 

The  Two  Noble  Kinsmen.     F.  and  Sh.  1613? 

Henry  VIII.     F.  and  Sh.  1613? 

The  Honest  Man's  Fortune.'  1613 

Wit  Without  Money.     F.  1614? 

Love's  Pilgrimage.                                                                •  1614? 

The  Faithful  Friends.  1614? 

The  Chances.     F.  161 5? 

Bonduca.     F.  1615? 

Valentinian.     F.  1615-16? 

The  Jeweller  of  Amsterdam,     (non-extant)  1616-17? 

The  Bloody  Brother;  or,  Rollo,  Duke  of  Normandy.  161 7?? 

The  Queen  of  Corinth.      F.  and  M.  ci6ij 

The  Loyal  Subject.     F.  161 8 

The  Mad  Lover.     F.  ci6i8 

The  Knight  of  Malta.  ci6i8 

Third  Period 

The  Humorous  Lieutenant.     F.  C1619? 

Sir  John*  van  Olden  Barnaveldt.      F.  and  M.  1619? 

The  Custom  of  the  Country.      F.  and  INI,  C1619 

The  Double  Marriage.      F.  and  ]\L  ci6iq 

The  Laws  of  Candy.  C1619 

The  Little  French  Lawyer.     F.  and  M.  ci62o 

The  False  One.     F.  and  ^L  C1620 

Woman  Pleased.     F.  C1620 

The  Island  Princess.     F.  C1620  • 

The  Pilgrim.     F.  C1621 

The  Wild  Goose  Chase.     F.  C1621 

The  Prophetess.  1622 

The  Sea  Voyage.  1622 

The  Spanish  Curate.  1622 

The  Maid  in  The  Mill.  1622 

The  Lover's  Progress  (The  Wandering  Lovers).  1623 
The  Fair  Maid  of  The  Inn.                                                             1623-1624 

A  Wife  for  a  Month.     F.  1624 

Rule  a  Wife  and  Have  a  Wife.  1624 

The  Noble  Gentleman.  1625? 

Coronation.  1625?? 

The  Elder  Brother.  1625?? 

Among  the  plays  of  the  first  period  are  the  charming  pastoral  the 
(Faithful  Shepherdess)  by  Fletcher,  and  the    (Knight  of  the   Burning 


FRANCIS    BEAUMONT    AND    JOHN    FLETCHER  1679 

Pestle,'  probably  mainly  by  Beaumont.  The  three  best  of  the  other 
plays  of  this  group,  (The  Maid's  Tragedy,)  .<Philaster,)  and  (A  King  and 
No  King)  are  the  best  representatives  of  the  collaboration.  They  owed 
much  to  the  contemporary  and  the  preceding  drama,  but  they  brought  a 
new  tone  and  a  new  method  to  the  stage.  They  are  melodramatic  with 
highly  colored  and  sharply  contrasting  situations  and  with  a  marked 
variation  of  tragic  and  idyllic  emotions.  Their  tone  is  that  of  the  arti- 
ficial, courtly  romance  destined  to  prevail  for  nearly  a  century,  and  their 
method  is  that  of  an  alternation  of  surprise  and  suspense  leading  to  a 
highly  developed  denouement. 

Other  plays  in  the  group  have  corresponding  qualities,  and  aid  in 
faxing  a  type  which  was  conspicuous  in  tragedy  and  tragi-comedy  until 
the  close  of  the  theatres.  The  plots,  largely  invented,  are  ingenious  and 
complicated.  They  deal  with  royal  persons,  heroic  actions,  foreign 
localities,  and  passions  that  ruin  kingdoms  and  torture  the  heart. 
Usually  contrasting  a  story  of  gross  sexual  passion  with  one  of  idyllic 
love,  they  introduce  sensational  incidents  and  aim  at  producing  a 
succession  of  thrills.  The  dramatis  personcc  belong  to  the  impossible 
and  romantic  situations  rather  than  to  life,  and  are  usually  of  certain 
fixed  types — the  sentimental  heroine,  the  evil  woman,  the  poltroon,  the 
violent  or  sentimental  hero,  and  his  faithful,  blunt  soldier-friend.  The 
clever  construction  that  carries  the  interest  from  one  surprise  to  an- 
other is  supported  by  the  vigor  and  felicity  of  the  poetry  which  rises 
to  emotion  after  emotion  without  effort  or  turgidity.  This  style  of 
romance  was  especially  suited  to  tragi-comedy,  where  the  tragic  and 
idyllic  could  be  heightened  and  contrasted,  and  where  the  suspense 
might  be  finally  relieved  through  a  happy  ending. 

In  the  second  and  third  period  the  influence  of  this  type  of  play  is 
manifest,  but  Fletcher's  practice  is,  of  course,  not  confined  to  any  single 
type.  It  would  be  possible  to  arrange  his  many  plays  in  a  sort  of  emo- 
tional scale — tragedies,  tragi-comedies,  romantic  comedies,  comedies  of 
manners,  farces.  The  prevailing  note  is  still  that  of  extravagant 
romance  and  the  prevailing  method  that  of  the  construction  of  effective 
theatrical  situations  with  a  large  use  of  the  element  of  surprise.  New 
types  of  character,  however,  appear,  as  notably  the  scapegrace,  sower 
of  wild  oats,  as  the  hero,  and  the  saucy  and  self-reliant  young  woman  as 
the  heroine. 

Fletcher  was  at  his  best  when  he  was  collaborating  with  Beaumont  or 
with  Shakespeare.  As  he  goes  on  he  rises  less  often  to  noble  poetry  and 
he  loses  rather  than  gains  in  artistic  sincerity.  But  throughout  his  work 
there  is  the  same  prodigality  of  talent.  He  has  no  profound  thought, 
no  searching  interpretation  of  life,  no  great  emotion  to  reveal,  but  his 
Pegasus  is  fleet-footed  and  ready  for  any  leap  within  his  master's 
hunting  ground. 


l68o  FRANCIS  BEAUMONT  AND  JOHN   FLETCHER 

THE   FAITHFUL   SHEPHERDESS 
By  Fletcher 

JClorin,  a  shepherdess,  watching  by  the  grave  of  her  lover,  is  found  by  a 
Satyr.] 


c 


i.ORiN  — Hail,  holy  earth,  whose  cold  arms  do  embrace 
The  truest  man  that  ever  fed  his  flocks 
By  the  fat  plains  of  fruitful  Thessaly. 
Thus  I  salute  thy  grave,  thus  do  I  pay 
My  early  vows,  and  tribute  of  mine  eyes, 
To  thy  still  loved  ashes:  thus  I  free 
Myself  from  all  ensuing  heats  and  fires 
Of  love :  all  sports,  delights,  and  jolly  games, 
That  shepherds  hold  full  dear,   thus  put  I  off. 
Now  no  more  shall  these  smooth  brows  be  begirt 
With  youthful  coronals,  and  lead  the  dance. 
No  more  the  company  of  fresh  fair  maids 
And  wanton  shepherds  be  to  me  delightful: 
Nor  the  shrill  pleasing  sound  of  merry  pipes 
Under  some  shady  dell,   when  the  cool  wind 
Plays  on  the  leaves:  all  be  far  away. 
Since  thou  art  far  away,  by  whose  dear  side 
How  often  have  I  sat,  crowned  with  fresh  flowers 
For  summer's  queen,  whilst  every  shepherd's  boy 
Puts  on  his  lusty  green,   with  gaudy  hook, 
And  hanging  script  of  finest  cordevan ! 
But  thou  art  gone,   and  these  are  gone  with  thee, 
And  all  arc  dead  but  thy  dear  memory; 
That  shall  outlive  thee,  and  shall  ever  spring. 
Whilst  there  are  pipes,   or  jolly  shepherds  sing. 
And  here  will  I,   in  honor  of  thy  love. 
Dwell  by  thy  grave,  forgetting  all  those  joys 
That  former  times  made  precious  to  mine  eyes, 
Only  remembering  what  my  youth  did  gain 
In  the  dark  hidden  virtuous  use  of  herbs. 
That  will  I  practice,  and  as  freely  give 
All  my  endeavors,  as  I  gained  them  free. 
Of  all  green  wounds  I  know  the  remedies 
In  men  or  cattle,  be  they  stung  with  snakes, 
Or  charmed  with  powerful  words  of  wicked  art; 
Or  be  they  love-sick,  or  through  too  much  heat 
Grown  wild,  or  lunatic;  their  eyes,  or  ears, 
Thickened  with  misty  film  of  dulling  rheum: 


FRANCIS  BEAUMONT  AND  JOHN  FLETCHER  1681 

These  I  can  cure,  such  secret  virtue  lies 

In  herbs  applied  by  a  virgin's  hand. 

My  meat  shall  be  what  these  wild  woods  afford, 

Berries  and  chestnuts,  plantains,  on  whose  cheeks 

The  sun  sits  smiling,  and  the  lofty  fruit 

Pulled  from  the  fair  head  of  the  straight-grown  pine. 

On  these  I'll  feed  with  free  content  and  rest. 

When  night  shall  blind  the  world,  by  thy  side  blessed, 

[A   Satyr  enter s.\ 

Satyr — Through  yon  same  bending  plain 

That  flings  his  arms  down  to  the  main. 

And  through  these  thick  woods  have  I  run. 

Whose  bottom  never  kissed  the  sun. 

Since  the  lusty  spring  began, 

All  to  please  my  master  Pan, 

Have  I  trotted  without  rest 

To  get  him  fruit;  for  at  a  feast 

He  entertains  this  coming  night 

His  paramour  the  Syrinx  bright: 

But  behold  a  fairer  sight! 

By  that  heavenly  form  of  thine, 

Brightest  fair,  thou  art  divine. 

Sprung  from  great  immortal  race 

Of  the  gods,  for  in  thy  face 

Shines  more  awful  majesty 

Than  dull  weak  mortality 

Dare  with  misty  eyes  behold, 

And  live:  therefore  on  this  mold 

Lowly  do  I  bend  my  knee 

In  worship  of  thy  deity. 

Deign  it,  goddess,  from  my  hand 

To  receive  whate'er  this  land 

From  her  fertile  womb  doth  send 

Of  her  choice  fruits;  and — but  lend 

Belief  to  that  the  Satyr  tells  — 

Fairer  by  the  famous  wells 

To  this  present  day  ne'er  grew, 

Never  better,  nor  more  true. 

Here  be  grapes,  whose  lusty  blood 

Is  the  learned  poet's  good; 

Sweeter  yet  did  never  crown 

The  head  of  Bacchus:  nuts  more  brown 


in — 106 


l682  FRANCIS  BEAUMONT   AND  JOHN   FLETCHER 

Than  the  squirrels'  teeth  that  crack  them; 

Deign,   O  fairest  fair,  to  take  them. 

For  these,  black-eyed  Driope 

Hath  oftentimes  commanded  me 

With  my  clasped  knee  to  climb. 

See  how  well  the  lusty  time 

Hath  decked  their  rising  cheeks  in  red, 

Such  as  on  your  lips  is  spread. 

Here  be  berries  for  a  queen; 

Some  be  red,  some  be  green; 

These  are  of  that  luscious  meat 

The  great  god  Pan  himself  doth  eat: 

All  these,  and  what  the  woods  can  yield. 

The  hanging  mountain,  or  the  field, 

I  freely  offer,  and  ere  long 

Will  bring  you  more,  more  sweet  and  strong; 

Till  when  humbly  leave  I  take, 

Lest  the  great  Pan  do  awake. 

That  sleeping  lies  in  a  deep  glade. 

Under  a  broad  beech's  shade. 

I  must  go,  I  must  run. 

Swifter  than  the  fiery  sun. 
Clorin — And  all  my  fears  go  with  thee. 

What  greatness,  or  what  private  hidden  power, 

Is  there  in  me  to  draw  submission 

From  this  rude  man  and  beast  ?  sure,  I  am  mortal 

The  daughter  of  a  shepherd ;  he  was  mortal, 

And  she  that  bore  me  mortal ;  prick  my  hand 

And  it  will  bleed;  a  fever  shakes  me,  and 

The  self-same  wind  that  makes  the  young  lambs  shrink. 

Makes  me  a-cold :  my  fear  says  I  am  mortal : 

Yet  I  have  heard  (my  mother  told  it  me) 

And  now  I  do  believe  it,  if  I  keep 

My  virgin  flower  uncropped,  pure,  chaste,  and  fair, 

No  goblin,  wood-god,  fairy,  elf,  or  fiend, 

Satyr,  or  other  power  that  haunts  the  groves, 

Shall  hurt  my  body,   or  by  vain  illusion 

Draw  me  to  wander  after  idle  fires, 

Or  voices  calling  me  in  dead  of  night 

To  make  me  follow,  and  so  tole  me  on 

Through  mire,  and  standing  pools,  to  find  my  ruin. 

Else  why  should  this  rough  thing,  who  never  knew 

Manners  nor  smooth  humanity,  whose  heats 

Are  rougher  than  himself,  and  more  misshapen. 


FRANCIS   BEAUMONT  AND  JOHN   FLETCHER  1683 

Thus  mildly  kneel  to  me  ?     Sure  there's  a  power 
In  that  great  name  of  Virgin,  that  binds  fast 
All  rude  uncivil  bloods,  all  appetites 
That  break  their  confines.     Then,  strong  Chastity, 
Be  thou  my  strongest  guard;  for  here  I'll  dwell 
In  opposition  against  fate  and  hell. 


SONG 

CARE-CHARMING  Sleep,  thou  easer  of  all  woes, 
Brother  to  Death,  sweetly  thyself  dispose 
On  this  afflicted  prince ;  fall,  like  a  cloud. 
In  gentle  showers;  give  nothing  that  is  loud 
Or  painful  to  his  slumbers;  easy,   light. 
And  as  a  purling  stream,   thou  son  of  Night, 
Pass  by  his  troubled  senses;    sing  his  pain. 
Like  hollow  murmuring  wind  or  silver  rain; 
Into  this  prince  gently,   oh,   gently  slide, 
And  kiss  him  into  slumbers  like  a  bride! 


SONG 

GOD  Lyaeus,   ever  young. 
Ever  honored,   ever  sung, 
Stained  with  blood  of  lusty  grapes, 
In  a  thousand  lusty  shapes, 
Dance  upon  the  mazer's  brim. 
In  the  crimson  liquor  swim ; 
From  thy  plenteous  hand  divine. 
Let  a  river  run  with  wine. 

God  of  youth,  let  this  day  here 
Enter  neither  care  nor  fear! 


L 


ASPATIA'S   SONG 

AY  a  garland  on  my  hearse 
Of  the  dismal  yew; 
Maidens,  willow-branches  bear, 
Say  I  died  true. 


My  love  was  false,  but  I  was  firm 
From  my  hour  of  birth: 

Upon  my  buried  body  lie 
Lightly,  gentle  earth! 


j684  FRANCIS  BEAUMONT  AND  JOHN  FLETCHER 


D 


LEANDRO'S   SONG 

By  Fletcher 

EAREST,  do  not  you  delay  me, 

Since  thou  know'st  I  must  be  gone; 
Wind  and  tide,   'tis  thought,  doth  stay  me, 
But  'tis  wind  that  must  be  blown 

From  that  breath,   whose  native  smell 
Indian  odors  far  excel. 

Oh  then  speak,  thou  fairest  fair! 

Kill  not  him  that  vows  to  serve  thee; 
But  perfume  this  neighboring  air. 

Else  dull  silence,  sure,  will  starve  me: 
'Tis  a  word  that's  quickly  spoken 
Which  being  restrained,  a  heart  is  broken. 


TRUE    BEAUTY 

MAY  I  find  a  woman  fair, 
And  her  mind  as  clear  as  air: 
If  her  beauty  go  alone, 
'Tis  to  me  as  if  'twere  none. 

May  I  find  a  woman  rich, 
And  not  of  too  high  a  pitch : 
If  that  pride  should  cause  disdain, 
Tell  me,  lover,  where's  thy  gain  ? 

May  I  find  a  woman  wise, 
And  her  falsehood  not  disguise : 
Hath  she  wit  as  she  hath  will, 
Double  armed  she  is  to  ill. 

May  T  find  a  woman  kind, 
And  not  wavering  like  the  wind : 
How  should  I  call  that  love  mine, 
W^hen  'tis  his,   and  his.  and  thine  ? 

May  I  find  a  woman  true. 
There  is  beauty's  fairest  hue. 
There  is  beauty,  love,  and  wit: 
Happy  he  can  compass  it! 


FRANCIS  BEAUMONT  AND  JOHN  FLETCHER  iggt 


ODE   TO   MELANCHOLY 
By   Fletcher 


H 


ENCE,   all  you  vain  delights, 
As  short  as  are  the  nights 

Wherein  you  spend  your  folly! 
There's  naught  in  this  life  sweet, 
If  man  were  wise  to  see  't. 
But  only  melancholy; 
Oh,  sweetest  melancholy! 
Welcome,  folded  arms,  and  fixed  eyes, 

A  sigh  that  piercing  mortifies, 
A  look  that's  fastened  to  the  ground, 
A  tongue  chained  up  without  a  sound! 

Fountain  heads,  and  pathless  groves. 
Places  which  pale  passion  loves! 
Moonlight  walks  when  all  the  fowls 
Are  warmly  housed,  save  bats  and  owls! 
A  midnight  bell,  a  parting  groan ! 
These  are  the  sounds  we  feed  upon; 

Then  stretch  our  bones  in  a  still  gloomy  valley; 

Nothing's  so  dainty  sweet  as  lovely  melancholy. 


TO  MY   DEAR   FRIEND,   MASTER   BENJAMIN   JONSON, 

UPON  HIS   'FOX' 
By   Beaumont 

IF  IT  might  stand  with  justice  to  allow 
The  swift  conversion  of  all  follies,  now 
Such  is  my  mercy,  that  I  could  admit 
All  sorts  should  equally  approve  the  wit 
Of  this  thy  even  work,  whose  growing  fame 
Shall  raise  thee  high,   and  thou  it,  with  thy  name; 
And  did  not  manners  and  my  love  command 
Me  to  forbear  to  make  those  understand 
Whom  thou,  perhaps,  hast  in  thy  wiser  doom 
Long  since  firmly  resolved,  shall  never  come 
To  know  more  than  they  do, —  I  would  have  shown 
To  all  the  world  the  art  which  thou  alone 
Hast  taught  our  tongue,  the  rules  of  time,  of  place. 
And  other  rites,  delivered  with  the  grace 


j686  FRANCIS   BEAUMONT  AND  JOHN   FLETCHER 

Of  comic  style,  which  only  is  far  more 

Than  any  English  stage  hath  known  before. 

But  since  our  subtle  gallants  think  it  good 

To  like  of  naught  that  may  be  understood, 

Lest  they  should  be  disproved,  or  have,  at  best, 

Stomachs  so  raw,   that  nothing  can  digest 

But  what's  obscene,  or  barks, — let  us  desire 

They  may  continue,  simply  to  admire 

Fine  clothes  and  strange  words,  and  may  live,  in  age 

To  see  themselves  ill  brought  upon  the  stage, 

And  like  it;  whilst  thy  bold  and  knowing  Muse 

Contemns  all  praise,  but  such  as  thou  wouldst  choose. 


ON   THE   TOMBS  IN   WESTMINSTER 
By  Beaumont 

MORTALITY,  behold,  and  fear! 
What  a  change  of  flesh  is  here! 
Think  how  many  royal  bones 
Sleep  within  this  heap  of  stones: 
Here  they  lie  had  realms  and  lands, 

Who  now  want  strength  to  stir  their  hands; 

Where  from  their  pulpits,  soiled  with  dust, 

They  preach,  «In  greatness  is  no  trust.  >> 
Here's  an  acre  sown  indeed 
With  the  richest,  royal'st  seed. 
That  the  earth  did  e'er  suck  in 
Since  the  first  man  died  for  sin : 
Here  the  bones  of  birth  have  cried, 

** Though  gods  they  were,  as  men  they  died:*' 
Here  are  sands,  ignoble  things, 
Dropt  from  the  ruined  sides  of  kings: 
Here's  a  world  of  pomp  and  state 
Buried  in  dust,  once  dead  by  fate. 


FRANCIS  BEAUMONT  AND  JOHN   FLETCHER  1687 

FROM   <PHILASTER,  OR   LOVE   LIES  A-BLEEDING> 
Arethusa's  Declaration 

LADY  —  Here  is  my  Lord  Philaster. 
Arethusa —  Oh,  'tis  well. 

Withdraw  yourself.  \Exit  Lady, 

Philaster —  Madam,  your  messenger 

Made  me  believe  you  wished  to  speak  with  me. 

Arethusa  —  'Tis  true,  Philaster,  but  the  words  are  such 
I  have  to  say,  and  do  so  ill  beseem 
The  mouth  of  woman,   that  I  wish  them  said. 
And  yet  am  loath  to  speak  them.     Have  you  known 
That  I  have  aught  detracted  from  your  worth  ? 
Have  I  in  person  wronged  you  ?  or  have  set 
My  baser  instruments  to  throw  disgrace 
Upon  your  virtues  ? 

Philaster —  Never,  madam,   you. 

Arethusa  —  Why  then  should  you,  in  such  a  public  place, 
Injure  a  princess,  and  a  scandal  lay 
Upon  my  fortunes,  famed  to  be  so  great. 
Calling  a  great  part  of  my  dowry  in  question  "i 

Philaster  —  Madam,  this  truth  which  I  shall  speak  will  be 
Foolish :  but,   for  your  fair  and  virtuous  self, 
I  could  afford  myself  to  have  no  right 
To  any  thing  you  wished. 

Arethusa —  Philaster,  know, 

I  must  enjoy  these  kingdoms. 

Philaster —  Madam,  both? 

Arethusa — Both,  or  I  die;  by  fate,  I  die,  Philaster, 
If  I  not  calmly  may  enjoy  them  both. 

Philaster — I  would  do  much  to  save  that  noble  life. 
Yet  would  be  loath  to  have  posterity 
Find  in  our  stories,  that  Philaster  gave 
His  right  unto  a  sceptre  and  a  crown 
To  save  a  lady's  longing. 

Arethusa —  Nay,  then,  hear: 

I  must  and  will  have  them,  and  more  — 

Philaster  —  What  more  ? 

Arethusa  —  Or  lose  that  little  life  the  gods  prepared 
To  trouble  this  poor  piece  of  earth  withal. 

Philaster  —  Madam,    what  more  ? 

Arethusa —  Turn,  then,  away  thy  face. 


l688  FRANCIS  BEAUMONT  AND  JOHN  FLETCHER 

PJiilastcr  —  No. 

Arethusa  —      Do. 

Philaster —         I  can  endure  it.     Turn  away  my  facef 
I  never  yet  saw  enemy  that  looked 
So  dreadfully,  but  that  I  thought  myself 
As  great  a  basilisk  as  he;  or  spake 
So  horribly,  but  that  I  thought  my  tongue 
Bore  thunder  underneath,  as  much  as  his; 
Nor  beast  that  I  could  turn  from:  shall  I  then 
Begin  to  fear  sweet  sounds  ?  a  lady's  voice. 
Whom  I  do  love  ?     Say,  you  would  have  my  life : 
Why,  I  will  give  it  you;  for  'tis  to  me 
A  thing  so  loathed,  and  unto  you  that  ask 
Of  so  poor  use,  that  I  shall  make  no  price: 
If  you  entreat,  I  will  unmovedly  hear. 

Arethusa — Yet,  for  my  sake,  a  little  bend  thy  looks^ 

Philaster — I  do. 

Arethusa —    Then  know,  I  must  have  them  and  thee. 

Philaster  —  And  me? 

Arethusa —  Thy  love;  without  which,  all  the  land 

Discovered  yet  will  serve  me  for  no  use 
But  to  be  buried  in. 

Philaster —  Is't  possible  ? 

Arethusa  —  With  it,  it  were  too  little  to  bestow 
On  thee.     Now,  though  thy  breath  do  strike  me  dead, 
(Which,  know,  it  may,)  I  have  unript  my  breast. 

Philaster  — M.a.diSiVs\,  you  are  too  full  of  noble  thoughts 
To  lay  a  train  for  this  contemned  life, 
Which  you  may  have  for  asking:  to  suspect 
Were  base,   where  I  deserve  no  ill.     Love  you! 
By  all  my  hopes  I  do,  above  my  life ! 
But  how  this  passion  should  proceed  from  you 
So  violently,  would  amaze  a  man 
That  would  be  jealous. 

Arethusa — Another  soul  into  my  body  shot 
Could  not  have  filled  me  with  more  strength  and  spirit 
Than  this  thy  breath.     But  spend  not  hasty  time 
In  seeking  how  I  came  thus:  'tis  the  gods. 
The  gods,  that  make  me  so;  and  sure,  our  love 
Will  be  the  nobler  and  the  better  blest, 
In  that  the  secret  justice  of  the  gods 
Is  mingled  with  it.     Let  us  leave,  and  kiss: 
Lest  some  unwelcome  guest  should  fall  betwixt  us. 
And  we  should  part  without  it. 


FRANCIS   BEAUMONT  AND  JOHN  FLETCHER  1689 

Philaster—  'Twill  be  ill 

I  should  abide  here  long. 

Arethusa —  'Tis  true:  and  worse 

You  should  come  often.     How  shall  we  devise 
To  hold  intelligence,  that  our  true  loves, 
On  any  new  occasion,  may  agree 
What  path  is  best  to  tread  ? 

Philaster—  I  have  a  boy, 

Sent  by  the  gods,  I  hope,  to  this  intent. 
Yet  not  seen  in  the  court.     Hunting  the  buck, 
I  found  him  sitting  by  a  fountain's  side. 
Of  which  he  borrowed  some  to  quench  his  thirst, 
And  paid  the  nymph  again  as  much  in  tears. 
A  garland  lay  him  by,  made  by  himself 
Of  many  several  flowers  bred  in  the  vale. 
Stuck  in  that  mystic  order  that  the  rareness 
Delighted  me ;  but  ever  when  he  turned 
His  tender  eyes  upon  'em,  he  would  weep. 
As  if  he  meant  to  make  'em  grow  again. 
Seeing  such  pretty  helpless- innocence 
Dwell  in  his  face,  I  asked  him  all  his  story. 
He  told  me  that  his  parents  gentle  died, 
Leaving  him  to  the  mercy  of  the  fields. 
Which  gave  him  roots;  and  of  the  crystal  springs, 
Which  did  not  stop  their  courses;  and  the  sun. 
Which  still,  he  thanked  him,  yielded  him  his  light. 
Then  took  he  up  his  garland,  and  did  show 
What  every  flower,  as  country-people  hold. 
Did  signify,   and  how  all,   ordered  thus. 
Expressed  his  grief;  and,  to  my  thoughts,  did  read 
The  prettiest  lecture  of  his  country-art 
That  could  be  wished:  so  that  methought  I  could 
Have  studied  it.     I  gladly  entertained 
Him,  who  was  glad  to  follow:  and  have  got 
The  trustiest,  loving'st,  and  the  gentlest  boy 
That  ever  master  kept.     Him  will  I  send 
To  wait  on  you,  and  bear  our  hidden  love. 


1690  FRANCIS  BEAUMONT  AND  JOHN  FLETCHER 


The  Story  of  Bellario 

PHiLASTER  —  But,  Bellario 
(For  I  must  call  thee  still  so),  tell  me  why 
Thou  didst  conceal  thy  sex.     It  was  a  fault, 
A  fault,   Bellario,  though  thy  other  deeds 
Of  truth  outweighed  it:  all  these  jealousies 
Had  flown  to  nothing,  if  thou  hadst  discovered 
What  now  we  know. 

Bellario —  My  father  oft  would  speak 

Your  worth  and  virtue;  and  as  I  did  grow 
More  and  more  apprehensive,   I  did  thirst 
To  see  the  man  so  praised.     But  yet  all  this 
Was  but  a  maiden-longing,  to  be  lost 
As  soon  as  found;  till,  sitting  in  my  window. 
Printing  my  thoughts  in  lawn,  I  saw  a  god, 
I  thought  (but  it  was  you),  enter  our  gates: 
My  blood  flew  out  and  back  again,  as  fast 
As  I  had  puffed  it  forth  and  sucked  it  in 
Like  breath;  then  was  I  called  away  in  haste 
To  entertain  you.     Never  was  a  man 
Heaved  from  a  sheep-cote  to  a  sceptre,  raised 
So  high  in  thoughts  as  I.     You  left  a  kiss 
Upon  these  lips  then,  which  I  mean  to  -keep 
From  you  for  ever;  I  did  hear  you  talk. 
Far  above  singing.     After  you  were  gone, 
I  gfrew  acquainted  with  my  heart,  and  searched 
What  stirred  it  so:  alas,  I  found  it  love! 
Yet  far  from  lust;  for,  could  I  but  have  lived 
In  presence  of  you,  I  had  had  my  end. 
For  this  I  did  delude  my  noble  father 
With  a  feigned  pilgrimage,  and  dressed  myself 
In  habit  of  a  boy;  and,   for  I  knew 
My  birth  no  match  for  you,   I  was  past  hope 
Of  having  you;  and,   understanding  well 
That  when  I  made  discovery  of  my  sex 
I  could  not  stay  with  you,   I  made  a  vow, 
By  all  the  most  religious  things  a  maid 
Could  call  together,  never  to  be  known. 
Whilst  there  was  hope  to  hide  me  from  men's  eyeSj 
For  other  than  I  seemed,  that  I  might  ever 
Abide  with  you.     Then  sat  I  by  the  fount, 
Where  first  you  took  me  up. 


FRANCIS   BEAUMONT   AND   JOHN   FLETCHER  ^^g^ 

King —  Search  out  a  match 

Within  our  kingdom,  where  and  when  thou  wilt, 
And  I  will  pay  thy  dowry;  and  thyself 
Wilt  well  deserve  him. 

Bellario  —  Never,  sir,  will  I 
Marry;  it  is  a  thing  within  my  vow: 
But  if  I  may  have  leave  to  serve  the  princess, 
To  see  the  virtues  of  her  lord  and  her, 
I  shall  have  hope  to  live. 

Arethusa —  I,  Philaster, 

Cannot  be  jealous,  though  you  had  a  lady 
Drest  like  a  page  to  serve  you ;  nor  will  I 
Suspect  her  living  here. —  Come,  live  with  me; 
Live  free  as  I  do.     She  that  loves  my  lord, 
Cursed  be  the  wife  that  hates  her! 


FROM   <THE   MAID'S   TRAGEDY  > 
Confession  of  Evadne  to  Amintor 

EVADNE  —  Would   I  could  say  so  [farewell]  to  my  black  dis- 
grace ! 
Oh,  where  have  I  been  all  this  time  ?  how  friended. 
That  I  should  lose  myself  thus  desperately. 
And  none  for  pity  show  me  how  I  wandered  ? 
There  is  not  in  the  compass  of  the  light 
A  more  unhappy  creature:  sure,  I  am  monstrous; 
For  I  have  done  those  follies,  those  mad  mischiefs. 
Would  dare  a  woman.     Oh,  my  loaden  soul, 
Be  not  so  cruel  to  me ;  choke  not  up 
The  way  to  my  repentance ! 

{£nter  Amintor.'] 

O  my  lord! 

Amintor  —    How  now  ? 

Evadne —  My  much-abused  lord!         \ Kneels. 

Amintor —  This  cannot  be! 

Evadne — I  do  not  kneel  to  live;  I  dare  not  hope  it; 
The  wrongs  I  did  are  greater.     Look  upon  me, 
Though  I  appear  with  all  my  faults. 

Amintor —  Stand  up. 

This  is  a  new  way  to  beget  more  sorrows: 
Heaven  knows  I  have  too  many.     Do  not  mock  me: 


1692 


FRANCIS   BEAUMONT  AND  JOHN   FLETCHER 

Though  I  am  tame,  and  bred  up  with  my  wrongs, 
"Which  are  my  foster-brothers,  I  may  leap, 
Like  a  hand-wolf,  into  my  natural  wildness, 
And  do  an  outrage:  prithee,  do  not  mock  me. 

Evadne — My  whole  life  is  so  leprous,  it  infects 
All  my  repentance.     I  would  buy  your  pardon. 
Though  at  the  highest  set,   even  with  my  life: 
That  slight  contrition,  that's  no  sacrifice 
For  what  I  have  committed. 

Amintor —  Sure,  I  dazzle: 

There  cannot  be  a  faith  in  that  foul  woman, 
That  knows  no  God  more  mighty  than  her  mischiefs. 
Thou  dost  still  worse,  still  number  on  thy  faults. 
To  press  my  poor  heart  thus.     Can  I  believe 
There's  any  seed  of  virtue  in  that  woman 
Left  to  shoot  up  that  dares  go  on  in  sin 
Known,   and  so  known  as  thine  is  ?     O  Evadne ! 
Would  there  were  any  safety  in  thy  sex. 
That  I  might  put  a  thousand  sorrows  off, 
And  credit  thy  repentance!  but  I  must  not: 
Thou  hast  brought  me  to  that  dull  calamity. 
To  that  strange  misbelief  of  all  the  world 
And  all  things  that  are  in  it,   that  I   fear 
I  shall  fall  like  a  tree,  and  find  my  grave, 
Only  remembering  that  I  grieve. 

Evadne —  My  lord. 

Give  me  your  griefs:  you  are  an  innocent, 
A  soul  as  white  as  Heaven;   let  not  my  sins 
Perish  your  noble  youth.     I  do  not  fall  here 
To  shadow  by  dissembling  with  my  tears, 
(As  all  say  women  can,)  or  to  make  less 
What  my  hot  will  hath  done,   which  Heaven  and  you 
Know  to  be  tougher  than  the  hand  of  time 
Can  cut  from  man's  remembrances;  no,  I  do  not; 
I  do  appear  the  same,  the  same  Evadne, 
Drest  in  the  shames  I  lived  in,  the  same  monster. 
But  these  are  names  of  honor  to  what  I  am: 
I  do  present  myself  the  foulest  creature, 
Most  poisonous,  dangerous,  and  despised  of  men, 
Lerna  e'er  bred,  or  Nilus.     I  am  hell, 
Till  you,  my  dear  lord,  shoot  your  light  into  me, 
The  beams  of  your  forgiveness;  I  am  soul-sick, 
And  wither  with  the  fear  of  one  condemned, 
Till  I  have  got  your  pardon. 


FKANCIS   BEAUMONT  AND  JOHN   FLETCHER  i(,g-^ 

Amintor —  Rise,  Evadne. 

Those  heavenly  powers  that  put  this  good  into  thee 
Grant  a  continuance  of  it !     I  forgive  thee : 
Make  thyself  worthy  of  it;  and  take  heed, 
Take  heed,   Evadne,  this  be  serious. 
Mock  not  the  powers  above,  that  can  and  dare 
Give  thee  a  great  example  of  their  justice 
To  all  ensuing  ages,   if  thou  playest 
With  thy  repentance,  the  best  sacrifice. 

Evadne —  I  have  done  nothing  good  to  win  belief. 
My  life  hath  been  so  faithless.     All  the  creatures 
Made  for  Heaven's  honors  have  their  ends,  and  good  ones, 
All  but  the  cozening  crocodiles,   false  women : 
They  reign  here  like  those  plagues,  those  killing  sores. 
Men  pray  against;  and  when  they  die,   like  tales 
111  told  and  unbelieved,  they  pass  away. 
And  go  to  dust  forgotten.     But,  my  lord, 
Those  short  days  I  shall  number  to  my  rest 
(As  many  must  not  see  me)  shall,  though  too  late, 
Though  in  my  evening,   yet  perceive  a  will, 
Since  I  can  do  no  good,  because  a  woman, 
Reach  constantly  at  something  that  is  near  it; 
I  will  redeem  one  minute  of  my  age. 
Or,  like  another  Niobe,  I'll  weep, 
Till  I  am  water. 

Amintor —  I  am  now  dissolved: 

My  frozen  soul  melts.     May  each  sin  thou  hast, 
Find  a  new  mercy !     Rise ;  I  am  at  peace. 

{^Evadne  rises.] 
Hadst  thou  been  thus,  thus  excellently  good. 
Before  that  devil-king  tempted  thy  frailty. 
Sure  thou  hadst  made  a  star.     Give  me  thy  hand: 
From  this  time  I  will  know  thee ;  and  as  far 
As  honor  gives  me  leave,  be  thy  Amintor. 
When  we  meet  next,   I  will  salute  thee  fairly, 
And  pray  the  gods  to  give  thee  happy  days: 
My  charity  shall  go  along  with  thee, 
Though  my  embraces  must  be  far  from  thee. 
I  should  have  killed  thee,  but  this  sweet  repentance 
Locks  up  my  vengeance :  for  which  thus  I  kiss  thee  — 

[I^isses  her.] 
The  last  kiss  we  must  take ;  and  would  to  Heaven 
The  holy  priest  that  gave  our  hands  together 
Had  given  us  equal  virtues!     Go,  Evadne; 


1694  FRANCIS   BEAUMONT   AND  JOHN   FLETCHER 

The  gods  thus  part  our  bodies.     Have  a  care 
My  honor  falls  no  farther:  I  am  well,  then. 

Evadne  —  All  the  dear  joys  here,  and  above  hereafter. 
Crown  thy  fair  soul!     Thus  I  take  leave,  my  lord; 
And  never  shall  you  see  the  foul  Evadne, 
Till  she  have  tried  all  honored  means,  that  may 
Set  her  in  rest  and  wash  her  stains  away. 


FROM   <BONDUCA> 
The  Death  of  the  Boy  Hengo 

\^Scene :  A  field  between  the  British  and  the  Roman  camps.  ] 

CARATACH  —  How  does  my  boy? 
Hengo — I  would  do  well;   my  heart's  well; 
I  do  not  fear. 

Caratach —  My  good  boy! 

Hengo —  I  know,  uncle, 

We  must  all  die :   my  little  brother  died ; 
I  saw  him  die,  and  he  died  smiling;   sure. 
There's  no  great  pain  in't,  uncle.     But  pray  tell  me, 
Whither  must  we  go  when  we  are  dead  } 

Caratach  [aside] —  Strange  questions! 

Why,  the  blessed'st  place,  boy!  ever  sweetness 
And  happiness  dwell  there. 

Hengo  —  Will  you  come  to  me  ? 

Caratach  —  Yes,  my  sweet  boy. 

Hengo —  Mine  aunt  too,  and  my  cousins? 

Caratach  —  All,  my  good  child. 

Hengo —  No  Romans,  uncle? 

Caratach —  No,   boy. 

Hengo  —  I  should  be  loath  to  meet  them  there. 

Caratach —  No  ill  men, 

That  live  by  violence  and  strong  oppression. 
Come  thither:  'tis  for  those  the  gods  love,  good  men. 

Hengo  —  Why,  then,   I  care  not  when  I  go,  for  surely 
I  am  persuaded  they  love  me:  I  never 
Blasphemed  'em,  uncle,  nor  transgressed  my  parents; 
I  always  said  my  prayers. 

Caratach —  Thou  shalt  go,  then; 

Indeed  thou  shalt. 

Hengo —  When  they  please. 

Caratach —  That's  my  good  boy! 

Art  thou  not  weary,  Hengo  ? 


FRANCIS   BEAUMONT  AND  JOHN   FLETCHER  1695 

Hengo  —  Weary,  uncle  ! 

I  have  heard  you  say  you  have  marched  all  day  in  armorr 

Caratach  —  I  have,   boy. 

Hengo —  Am  not  I  your  kinsman? 

Caratach  —  Yes. 

Hengo  —  And  am  not  I  as  fully  allied  unto  you 
In  those  brave  things  as  blood  ? 

Caratach —  Thou  art  too  tender. 

Hengo  —  To  go  upon  my  legs?  they  were  made  to  bear  me. 
I  can  play  twenty  miles  a  day;   I  see  no  reason 
But,  to  preserve  my  country  and  myself, 
I  should  march  forty. 

Caratach-^  What  wouldst  thou  be,   living 

To  wear  a  man's  strength! 

Hengo —  Why,  a  Caratach, 

A  Roman-hater,  a  scourge  sent  from  Heaven 
To  whip  these  proud  thieves  from  our  kingdom.     Hark! 

[Drum  within. 


[They  are  on  a  rock  in  the  rear  of  a  wood.] 

Caratach  —  Courage,  my  boy!     I  have  found  meat:    look, 
Hengo, 
Look  where  some  blessed  Briton,  to  preserve  thee, 
Has  hung  a  little  food  and  drink:    cheer  up,  boy; 
Do  not  forsake  me  now. 

Hengo —  O  uncle,  uncle, 

I  feel  I  cannot  stay  long!  yet  I'll  fetch  it. 
To  keep  your  noble  life.     Uncle,  I  am  heart-whole, 
And  would  live. 

Caratach —     Thou  shalt,  long,   I  hope. 

Heftgo —  But  my  head,  uncle  1 

Methinks  the  rock  goes  round. 

\Enter  Macer  and  Judas,  and  rernain  at  the  side  of  the  stage.] 

Macer —  Mark  'em  well,  Judas. 

Judas  —  Peace,  as  you  love  your  life. 

Hengo —  Do  not  you  hear 

The  noise  of  bells? 

Caratach —  Of  bells,   boy  !    'tis  thy  fancy; 

Alas,  thy  body's  full  of  wind! 

Hengo —  Methinks,  sir. 

They  ring  a  strange  sad  knell,  a  preparation 


1696  FRANCIS   BEAUMONT  AND  JOHN   FLETCHER 

To  some  near  funeral  of  state :   nay,   weep  not, 
Mine  own  sweet  uncle;   you  will  kill  me  sooner. 

Caratach  —  O  my  poor  chicken! 

Hengo —  Fie,  faint-hearted  uncle! 

Come,   tie  me  in  your  belt  and  let  me  down. 

Caratach  —  I'll  go  myself,   boy. 

Hengo —  No,  as  you  love  me,  uncle: 

I  will  not  eat  it,  if  I  do  not  fetch  it; 

The  danger  only  I  desire :   pray,  tie  me.  [child, 

Caratach  —  I  will,  and  all  my   care   hang  o'er  thee!     Come, 
My  valiant  child ! 

Hengo —  Let  me  down  apace,   uncle, 

And  you  shall  see  how  like  a  daw  I'll  whip  it 
From  all  their  policies;  for  'tis  most  certain 
A  Roman  train:   and  you  must  hold  me  sure,  too; 
You'll  spoil  all  else.     When  I  have  brought  it,  uncle, 
We'll  be  as  merry  — 

Caratach —  Go,  i'  the  name  of  Heaven,  boy! 

\Lets  Hengo  down  by  his  belt. 

Hengo  —  Quick,  quick,  uncle!    I  have  it. 

\  Judas  shoots  Hengo  with  an  arrow.  ]     Oh ! 

Caratach —  What  ail'st  thou? 

Hengo  —  Oh,  my  best  uncle,  I  am  slain! 

Caratach  [to  Judas^ —  I  see  you. 

And  Heaven  direct  my  hand!   destruction 
Go  with  thy  coward  soul ! 
{Kills  Judas  with  a  stone,  and  then  draws  up  Hengo.     Exit  Macer.] 

How  dost  thou,  boy? — 

0  villain,   pocky  villain ! 

Hengo —  Oh,  uncle,  uncle. 

Oh,   how  it  pricks  me!  —  am  I  preserved  for  this? — 
Extremely  pricks  me ! 

Caratach —  Coward,  rascal  coward! 

Dogs  eat  thy  flesh !  • 

Hengo  —  Oh,   I  bleed  hard!  I  faint  too;  out  upon't, 
How  sick  I  am !  —  The  lean  rogue,  uncle ! 

Caratach —  Look,  boy; 

1  have  laid  him  sure  enough. 

Hengo  —  Have  you  knocked  his  brains  out  ? 

Caratach  — \    warrant    thee,  for    stirring    more:    cheer    up, 

child. 
He??go  —  Hold   my   sides  .hard;    stop,    stop;    oh,   wretched 

fortune, 
Must  we  part  thus  ?     Still  I  grow  sicker,  uncle. 


FRANCIS  BEAUMONT  AND  JOHN  FLETCHER  1697 

Carafach  —  Heaven  look  upon  this  noble  child ! 

Hengo —  I  once  hoped 

I  should  have  lived  to  have  met  these  bloody  Romans 
At  my  sword's  point,  to  have  revenged  my  father, 
To  have  beaten  'em,  —  oh,  hold  me  hard!  —  but,  uncle  — 

Caratach  —  Thou    shalt    live    still,    I    hope,    boy.        Shall    I 
draw  it  ? 

Hengo — You  draw  away  my  soul,  then.     I  would  live 
A  little  longer  —  spare  me.  Heavens!  —  but  only 
To  thank  you  for  your  tender  love :  good  uncle, 
Good  noble  uncle,  weep  not. 

Caratach —  O  my  chicken, 

My  dear  boy,  what  shall  I  lose  } 

He?igo —  Why,  a  child, 

That  must  have  died  however;  had  this  'scaped  me. 
Fever  or  famine  —  I  was  born  to  die,  sir. 

Caratach  —  But  thus  unblown,  my  boy  ? 

Hengo —  I  go  the  straighter 

My  journey  to  the  gods.     Sure,  I  shall  know  you 
When  you  come,  uncle. 

Caratach —  Yes,  boy. 

Hengo —  And  I  hope 

We  shall  enjoy  together  that  great  blessedness 
You  told  me  of. 

Caratach —         Most  certain,  child. 

Hengo —  I  grow  cold. 

Mine  eyes  are  going. 

Caratach —  Lift  'em  up. 

Hengo —  Pray  for  me; 

And,  noble  uncle,  when  my  bones  are  ashes, 
Think  of  your  little  nephew!  —  Mercy! 

Caratach  —  Mercy ' 

You  blessed  angels,  take  him! 

Hengo  —  Kiss  me :  so. 

Farewell,  farewell!  {Dies. 

Caratach —  Farewell,  the  hopes  of  Britain! 

Thou  royal  graft,  farewell  for  ever! — Time  and  Death, 
Ye  have  done  your  worst.     Fortune,   now  see,   now  proudly 
Pluck  off  thy  veil  and  view  thy  triumph;  look. 
Look  what  thou  hast  brought  this  land  to!  —  O  fair  flower, 
How  lovely  yet  thy  ruins  show,  how  sweetly 
Even  death  embraces  thee !  the  peace  of  Heaven, 
The  fellowship  of  all  great  souls,  be  with  thee' 
III — 107 


1698  FRANCIS  BEAUMONT  AND  JOHN   FLETCHER 

FROM    <THE   TWO   NOBLE   KINSMEN  > 
By  Shakespeare  and  Fletcher 

ROSES,  their  sharp  spines  being  gone, 
Not  royal  in  their  smells  alone, 
But  in  their  hue; 
Maiden-pinks,   of  odor  faint, 
Daisies  smell-less  yet  most  quaint. 
And  sweet  thyme  true; 

Primrose,  first-born  child  of  Ver, 
Merry  spring-time's  harbinger, 

With  her  bells  dim; 
0:xlips  in  their  cradles  growing. 
Marigolds  on  death-beds  blowing, 

Larks'-heels  trim. 

All,  dear  Nature's  children  sweet. 
Lie  'fore  bride  and  bridegroom's  feet. 

Blessing  their  sense! 
Not  an  angel  of  the  air, 
Bird  melodious  or  bird  fair. 

Be  absent  hence ! 

The  crow,  the  slanderous  cuckoo,  nor 
The  boding  raven,  nor  chough  hoar, 

Nor  chattering  pie. 
May  on  our  bride-house  perch  or  sing, 
Or  with  them  any  discord  bring. 

But  from  it  fly  I 


i699 


WILLIAM   BECKFORD 

(1 759-1844) 

Ihe  translation  from  a  defective  Arabic  manuscript  of  the 
<Book  of  the  Thousand  Nights  and  A  Night,*  first  into  the 
French  by  Galland,  about  1705,  and  presently  into  various 
English  versions,  exerted  an  immediate  influence  on  French,  Ger- 
man, and  English  romance.  The  pseudo-Oriental  or  semi-Oriental  tale 
of  home-manufacture  sprang  into  existence  right  and  left  with  the 
publishers  of  London  and  Paris,  and  in  German  centres  of  letters. 
Hope's  ^Anastasius,  or  Memoirs  of  a  Modern  Greek,*  Lewis's  ^The 
Monk,  *  the  German  Hauff  's  admirable 
*  Stories  of  the  Caravan,  the  Inn,  and  the 
Palace,*  Riickert's  ^ Tales  of  the  Genii,*  and 
William  Beckford's  ^  History  of  the  Caliph 
Vathek,*  are  among  the  finest  performances 
of  the  sort :  productions  more  or  less  East- 
ern in  sentiment  and  in  their  details  of 
local  color,  but  independent  of  direct  ori- 
ginals in  the  Persian  or  Arabic,  so  far  as  is 
conclusively  known. 

William  Beckford,  born  at  London  in 
1759  (of  a  strong  line  which  included  a 
governor  of  Jamaica),  dying  in  1844,  is  a 
figure  of  distinction  merely  as  an  English- 
man of  his  time,  aside  from  his  one  claim 

to  literary  remembrance.  His  father's  death  left  him  the  richest 
untitled  citizen  of  England.  He  was  not  sent  to  a  university,  but 
immense  care  was  given  to  his  education,  in  which  Lord  Chatham 
personally  interested  himself;  and  he  traveled  widely.  The  result 
of  this,  on  a  very  receptive  mind  with  varied  natural  gifts,  was  to 
make  Beckford  an  ideal  dilettante.  His  tastes  in  literature,  painting, 
music  (in  which  Mozart  was  his  tutor),  sculpture,  architecture,  and 
what  not,  were  refined  to  the  highest  nicety.  He  was  able  to  gratify 
each  of  them  as  such  a  man  can  rarely  have  the  means  to  do.  He 
built  palaces  and  towers  of  splendor  instead  of  merely  a  beautiful 
country  seat.  He  tried  to  reproduce  Vathek's  halls  in  stone  and 
stucco,  employing  relays  of  workmen  by  day  and  night,  on  two  sev- 
eral occasions  and  estates,  for  many  months.  Where  other  men  got 
together  moderate  collections  of  bibelots,  Beckford  amassed  whole 
museums.  If  a  builder's  neglect  or  a  fire  destroyed  his  rarities  and 
damaged  his  estates  to  the  extent  of  forty  or  fifty  thousand  pounds. 


William  Beckford 


lyoo  WILLIAM   BECKFORD 

Beckford  merely  rebuilt  and  re-collected.  These  tastes  and  lavish 
expenditures  gradually  set  themselves  in  a  current  toward  things 
Eastern.  His  magnificent  retreat  at  Cintra  in  Portugal,  his  vast 
Fonthill  Abbey  and  Lansdowne  Hill  estates  in  England,  were  only 
appanages  of  his  sumptuous  state.  England  and  Europe  talked  of 
him  and  of  his  properties.  He  was  a  typical  egotist:  but  an  agree- 
able and  gracious  man,  esteemed  by  a ,  circle  of  friends  not  called 
upon  to  be  his  sycophants ;  and  he  kept  in  close  touch  with  the  intel- 
lectual life  of  all  Europe. 

He  wrote  much,  for  an  amateur,  and  in  view  of  the  tale  which 
does  him  most  honor,  he  wrote  with  success.  At  twenty  he  invited 
publicity  with  a  satiric  jeu  d' esprit,  <  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Extraor- 
dinary Painters  >;  and  his  <  Italy,  with  Sketches  of  Spain  and  Port- 
ugal, >  and  *  Recollections  of  an  Excursion  to  the  Monasteries  of 
Alcobaba  and  Baltalha,^  were  well  received.  But  these  books  could 
not  be  expected  to  survive  even  three  generations;  whereas  <Vathek,> 
the  brilliant,  the  unique,  the  inimitable  ^Vathek,*  took  at  once  a 
place  in  literature  which  we  may  now  almost  dare  to  call  perma- 
nent. This  story,  not  a  long  one, — indeed,  no  more  than  a  novel- 
ette in  size, — was  originally  written  in  French,  and  still  lives  in  that 
language;  in  which  an  edition,  hardly  the  best,  has  lately  been 
issued  under  the  editorship  of  M.  Mallarme.  But  its  history  is  com- 
plicated by  one  of  the  most  notable  acts  of  literary  treachery  and 
theft  on  record.  During  the  author's  slow  and  finicky  composition  of 
it  at  Lausanne,  he  was  sending  it  piecemeal  to  his  friend  Robert 
Henley  in  England  ror  Henley  to  make  an  English  version,  of  course 
to  be  revised  by  himself.  As  soon  as  Henley  had  all  the  parts,  he 
published  a  hasty  and  slipshod  translation,  before  Beckford  had  seen 
it  or  was  even  ready  to  publish  the  French  original;  and  not  only 
did  so,  but  published  it  as  a  tale  translated  by  himself  from  a  gen- 
uine Arabic  original.  This  double  violation  of  good  faith  of  course 
enraged  Beckford,  and  practically  separated  the  two  men  for  the  rest 
of  their  lives;  indeed,  the  wonder  is  that  Beckford  would  ever  recog- 
nize Henley's  existence  again.  The  piracy  was  exposed  and  set 
aside,  and  Beckford  in  self-defense  issued  the  story  himself  in  French 
as  soon  as  he  could;  indeed,  he  issued  it  in  two  versions  with  curi- 
ous and  interesting  differences,  one  published  at  Lausanne  and  the 
other  at  Paris.     The  Lausanne  edition  is  preferable. 

*•  Vathek  >  abides  to-day  accredited  to  Beckford  in  both  French 
and  English ;  a  thing  to  keep  his  memory  green  as  nothing  else  of  his 
work  or  personality  will.  The  familiar  legend  that  in  its  present 
form  it  was  composed  at  a  single  sitting,  with  such  ardor  as  to  entail 
a  severe  illness,  and  <<  without  the  author's  taking  off  his  clothes, >* 
cannot  be  reconciled  with  the  known  facts.     But  the  intensely  vivid 


WILLIAM  BECKFORD  I^oj 

movement  of  it  certainly  suggests  swift  production;  and  it  could 
easily  be  thought  that  any  author  had  sketched  such  a  story  in  the 
heat  of  some  undistm^bed  sitting,  and  filled,  finished,  and  polished  it 
at  leisure.  It  is  an  extraordinary  performance ;  even  in  Henley's 
unsatisfactory  version  it  is  irresistible,  We  know  that  Beckford 
expected  to  add  liberally  to  it  by  inserting  sundry  subordinate  tales, 
put  into  the  mouths  of  some  of  the  personages  appearing  in  the  last 
scene.  It  is  quite  as  well  that  he  did  not.  Its  distinctive  Orientalism, 
perhaps  less  remarkable  than  the  unfettered  imagination  of  its  epi- 
sodes, the  vividness  of  its  characters,  the  easy  brilliancy  of  its  literary 
manner  —  these  things,  with  French  diction  and  French  wit,  alternate 
with  startling  descriptive  impressiveness.  It  is  a  French  combination 
of  Cervantes  and  Dante,  in  an  Oriental  and  bizarre  narrative.  It  is 
not  always  delicate,  but  it  is  never  vulgar,  and  the  sprightly  pages 
are  as  admirable  as  the  weird  ones.  Its  pictures,  taken  out  of  their 
connection,  seem  irrelevant,  and  are  certainly  unlike  enough ;  but 
they  are  a  succession  of  surprises  and  fascinations.  Such  are  the 
famous  description  of  the  chase  of  Vathek's  court  after  the  Giaour; 
the  moonlit  departure  of  the  Caliph  for  the  Terrace  of  Istakhar;  the 
episodes  of  his  stay  under  the  roof  of  the  Emir  Fakreddin;  the  pur- 
suit by  Carathis  on  <<her  great  camel  Alboufaki,>>  attended  by  ^^the 
hideous  Nerkes  and  the  unrelenting  Cafour>>;  Nouronihar  drawn  to 
the  magic  flame  in  the  dell  at  night;  the  warning  of  the  good  Jinn; 
and  the  tremendous  final  tableau  of  the  Hall  of  Eblis. 

The  man  curious  in  letters  regards  with  affection  the  evidences 
of  vitality,  in  a  brief  production  little  m.ore  than  a  century  old; 
unique  in  English  and  French  literature,  and  occupying  to-day  a  high 
rank  among  the  small  group  of  ^^^as i-Oriental  narratives  that  repre- 
sent the  direct  workings  of  Galland  on  the  Occidental  literary  tempera- 
ment. To-day  ^  Vathek  ^  surprises  and  delights  persons  whose  mental 
constitution  puts  them  in  touch  with  it,  just  as  potently  as  ever  it 
did.  And  simply  as  a  wild  story,  one  fancies  that  it  will  appeal 
quite  as  effectually,  no  matter  how  many  editions  may  be  its  future, 
to  a  public  perhaps  unsympathetic  toward  its  elliptical  satire,  its 
caustic  wit,  its  fantastic  course  of  narrative,  and  its  incongruous 
wavering  between  the  flippant,  the  grotesque,  and  the  terrific. 


jyQ2  WILLIAM   BECKFORD 

THE    INCANTATION   AND   THE    SACRIFICE 
From  <The  History  of  t&e  Caliph  Vathek> 

Bv  SECRET  stairs,  known  only  to  herself  and  her  son,  she  [Cara- 
this]  first  repaired  to  the  mysterious  recesses  in  which  were 
deposited  the  mummies  that  had  been  brought  from  the 
catacombs  of  the  ancient  Pharaohs.  Of  these  she  ordered  several 
to  be  taken.  From  thence  she  resorted  to  a  gallery,  where,  under 
the  guard  of  fifty  female  negroes,  mute,  and  blind  of  the  right 
eye,  were  preserved  the  oil  of  the  most  venomous  serpents,  rhi- 
noceros horns,  and  woods  of  a  subtle  and  penetrating  odor,  pro- 
cured from  the  interior  of  the  Indies,  together  with  a  thousand 
other  horrible  rarities.  This  collection  had  been  formed  for  a 
purpose  like  the  present  by  Carathis  herself,  from  a  presentiment 
that  she  might  one  day  enjoy  some  intercourse  with  the  infernal 
powers,  to  whom  she  had  ever  been  passionately  attached,  and  to 
whose  taste  she  was  no  stranger. 

To  familiarize  herself  the  better  with  the  horrors  in  view  the 
Princess  remained  in  the  company  of  her  negresses,  who  squinted 
in  the  most  amiable  manner  from  the  only  eye  they  had,  and 
leered  with  exquisite  delight  at  the  skulls  and  skeletons  which 
Carathis  had  drawn  forth  from  her  cabinets.      .      .      . 

Whilst  she  was  thus  occupied,  the  Caliph,  who,  instead  of  the 
visions  he  expected,  had  acquired  in  these  insubstantial  regions  a 
voracious  appetite,  was  greatly  provoked  at  the  negresses:  for, 
having  totally  forgotten  their  deafness,  he  had  impatiently  asked 
them  for  food;  and  seeing  them  regardless  of  his  demand,  he 
began  to  cuff,  pinch,  and  push  them,  till  Carathis  arrived  to  ter- 
minate a  scene  so  indecent.     .     . 

"  Son !    what   means   all    this  ? "    said    she,   panting    for    breath. 
"  I  thought  I  heard  as  I  came  up,   the  shriek  of  a  thousand  bats, 
tearing  from   their  crannies  in  the   recesses  of  a  cavern. 
You  but  ill  deserve  the  admirable  provision  I  have  brought  you.'^ 

"  Give  it  me  instantly !  *^  exclaimed  the  Caliph :  <^  I  am  perish- 
ing for  hunger !  ** 

"As  to  that,"  answered  she,  **you  must  have  an  excellent 
stomach  if  it  can  digest  what  I  have  been  preparing." 

"Be  quick,"  replied  the  Caliph.  "But  oh,  heavens!  what  hor- 
rors!    What  do  you  intend?" 

"Come,  come,"  returned  Carathis,  "be  not  so  squeamish,  but 
help  me  to  arrange  everything  properly,  and  you   shall  see  that 


WILLIAM   BECKFORD  1^03 

what  you  reject  with  such  symptoms  of  disgust  will  soon  complete 
your  felicity.  Let  us  get  ready  the  pile  for  the  sacrifice  of  to- 
night, and  think  not  of  eating  till  that  is  performed.  Know  you 
not  that  all  solemn  rites  are  preceded  by  a  rigorous  abstinence  ?  * 

The  Caliph,  not  daring  to  object,  abandoned  himself  to  grief, 
and  the  wind  that  ravaged  his  entrails,  whilst  his  mother  went 
forward  with  the  requisite  operations.  Phials  of  serpents'  oil, 
mummies,  and  bones  were  soon  set  in  order  on  the  balustrade  of 
the  tower.  The  pile  began  to  rise;  and  in  three  hours  was  as 
many  cubits  high.  At  length  darkness  approached,  and  Carathis, 
having  stripped  herself  to  her  inmost  garment,  clapped  her  hands 
in  an  impulse  of  ecstasy,  and  struck  light  with  all  her  force. 
The  mutes  followed  her  example:  but  Vathek,  extenuated  with 
hunger  and  impatience,  was  unable  to  support  himself,  and  fell 
down  in  a  swoon.  The  sparks  had  already  kindled  the  dry  wood; 
the  venomous  oil  burst  into  a  thousand  blue  flames;  the  mimi- 
mies,  dissolving,  emitted  a  thick  dun  vapor;  and  the  rhinoceros' 
horns  beginning  to  consume,  all  together  diffused  such  a  stench, 
that  the  Caliph,  recovering,  started  from  his  trance  and  gazed 
wildly  on  the  scene  in  full  blaze  around  him.  The  oil  gushed 
forth  in  a  plenitude  of  streams;  and  the  negresses,  who  supplied 
it  without  intermission,  united  their  cries  to  those  of  the  Princess. 
At  last  the  fire  became  so  violent,  and  the  flames  reflected  from 
the  polished  marble  so  dazzling,  that  the  Caliph,  unable  to  with- 
stand the  heat  and  the  blaze,  effected  his  escape,  and  clambered 
up  the  imperial  standard. 

In  the  mean  time,  the  inhabitants  of  Samarah,  scared  at  the 
light  which  shone  over  the  city,  arose  in  haste,  ascended  their 
roofs,  beheld  the  tower  on  fire,  and  hurried  half-naked  to  the 
square.  Their  love  to  their  sovereign  immediately  awoke;  and 
apprehending  him  in  danger  of  perishing  in  his  tower,  their  whole 
thoughts  were  occupied  with  the  means  of  his  safety.  Morakana- 
bad  flew  from  his  retirement,  wiped  away  his  tears,  and  cried 
'out  for  water  like  the  rest.  Bababalouk,  whose  olfactory  nerves 
were  more  familiarized  to  magical  odors,  readily  conjecturing  that 
Carathis  was  engaged  in  her  favorite  amusements,  strenuously 
exhorted  them  not  to  be  alarmed.  Him,  however,  they  treated  as 
an  old  poltroon;  and  forbore  not  to  style  him  a  rascally  traitor. 
The  camels  and  dromedaries  were  advancing  with  water,  but  no 
one  knew  by  which  way  to  enter  the  tower.  Whilst  the  populace 
was  obstinate  in  forcing  the  doors,  a  violent  east  wind  drove  such 


iyo4  WILLIAM   BECKFORD 

a  volume  of  flame  against  them,  as  at  first  forced  them  off,  but 
afterwards  rekindled  their  zeal.  At  the  same  time,  the  stench  of 
the  horns  and  mummies  increasing,  most  of  the  crowd  fell  back- 
ward in  a  state  of  suffocation.  Those  that  kept  their  feet  mut- 
ually wondered  at  the  cause  of  the  smell,  and  admonished  each 
other  to  retire.  Morakanabad,  more  sick  than  the  rest,  remained 
in  a  piteous  condition.  Holding  his  nose  with  one  hand,  he  per- 
sisted in  his  efforts  with  the  other  to  burst  open  the  doors,  and 
obtain  admission.  A  hundred  and  forty  of  the  strongest  and  most 
resolute  at  length  accomplished  their  purpose. 

Carathis,  alarmed  at  the  signs  of  her  mutes,  advanced  to  the 
staircase,  went  down  a  few  steps,  and  heard  several  voices  calling 
out  from  below:  — 

"  You  shall  in  a  moment  have  water !  ** 

Being  rather  alert,  considering  her  age,  she  presently  regained 
the  top  of  the  tower,  and  bade  her  son  suspend  the  sacrifice  for 
some  minutes,  adding:  — 

"  We  shall  soon  be  enabled  to  render  it  more  grateful.  Cer- 
tain dolts  of  your  subjects,  imagining,  no  doubt,  that  we  were  on 
fire,  have  been  rash  enough  to  break  through  those  doors,  which 
had  hitherto  remained  inviolate,  for  the  sake  of  bringing  up  water. 
They  are  very  kind,  you  must  allow,  so  soon  to  forget  the  wrongs 
you  have  done  them:  but  that  is  of  little  moment.  Let  us  offer 
them  to  the  Giaour.  Let  them  come  up:  our  mutes,  who  neither 
want  strength  nor  experience,  will  soon  dispatch  them,  exhausted 
as  they  are  with  fatigue.  ^^ 

<*  Be  it  so,**  answered  the  Caliph,  "provided  we  finish,  and  I 
dine.  *^ 

In  fact,  these  good  people,  out  of  breath  from  ascending 
eleven  thousand  stairs  in  such  haste,  and  chagrined  at  having 
spilt,  by  the  way,  the  water  they  had  taken,  were  no  sooner 
arrived  at  the  top  than  the  blaze  of  the  flames  and  the  fumes  of 
the  mummies  at  once  overpowered  their  senses.  It  was  a  pity! 
for  they  beheld  not  the  agreeable  smile  with  which  the  mutes 
and  the  negresses  adjusted  the  cord  to  their  necks:  these  amiable 
personages  rejoiced,  however,  no  less  at  the  scene.  Never  before 
had  the  ceremony  of  strangling  been  performed  with  so  much 
facility.  They  all  fell  without  the  least  resistance  or  struggle;  so 
that  Vathek,  in  the  space  of  a  few  moments,  found  himself  sur- 
rounded by  the  dead  bodies  of  his  most  faithful  subjects,  all  of 
which  were  thrown  on  the  top  of  the  pile. 


WILLIAM   BECKFORD  1705 


VATHEK   AND   NOURONIHAR   IN    THE   HALLS   OF   EBLIS 

From  <The  History  of  the  Caliph  Vathek> 

THE  Caliph  and  Nouronihar  beheld  each  other  with  amazement, 
at  finding-  themselves  in  a  place  which,  though  roofed  with 
a  vaulted  ceiling,  was  so  spacious  and  lofty  that  at  first 
they  took  it  for  an  immeasurable  plain.  But  their  eyes  at  length 
growing  familiar  with  the  grandeur  of  the  objects  at  hand,  they 
extended  their  view  to  those  .at  a  distance,  and  discovered  rows 
of  columns  and  arcades,  which  gradually  diminished  till  they 
terminated  in  a  point,  radiant  as  the  sun  when  he  darts  his  last 
beams  athwart  the  ocean;  the  pavement,  strewed  over  with  gold 
dust  and  saffron,  exhaled  so  subtle  an  odor  as  almost  overpowered 
them;  they  however  went  on,  and  observed  an  infinity  of  censers, 
in  which  ambergris  and  the  wood  of  aloes  were  continually  burn- 
ing; between  the  several  columns  were  placed  tables,  each  spread 
with  a  profusion  of  viands,  and  wines  of  every  species  sparkling 
in  vases  of  crystal.  A  throng  of  genii  and  other  fantastic  spirits 
of  each  sex  danced  lasciviously  in  troops,  at  the  sound  of  music 
which  issued  from  beneath. 

In  the  midst  of  this  immense  hall  a  vast  multitude  was  inces- 
santly passing,  who  severally  kept  their  right  hands  on  their 
hearts,  without  once  regarding  anything  around  them;  they  had 
all  the  livid  paleness  of  death;  their  eyes,  deep  sunk  in  their 
sockets,  resembled  those  phosphoric  meteors  that  glimmer  by 
night  in  places  of  interment.  Some  stalked  slowly  on,  absorbed 
in  profound  reverie;  some,  shrieking  with  agony,  ran  furiously 
about,  like  tigers  wounded  with  poisoned  ar'-ows;  whilst  others, 
grinding  their  teeth  in  rage,  foamed  along,  more  frantic  than  the 
wildest  maniac.  They  all  avoided  each  other,  and  though  sur- 
rounded by  a  multitude  that  no  one  could  number,  each  wandered 
at  random,  unheedful  of  the  rest,  as  if  alone  on  a  desert  which 
no  foot  had  trodden. 

Vathek  and  Nouronihar,  frozen  with  terror  at  a  sight  so  bale- 
ful,, demanded  of  the  Giaour  what  these  appearances  might  seem, 
and  why  these  ambulating  spectres  never  withdrew  their  hands 
from  their  hearts. 

"Perplex  not  yourselves, ^^  replied  he  bluntly,  "with  so  much 
at  once;  you  will  soon  be  acquainted  with  all:  let  us  haste  and 
present  you  to  Eblis.  ** 


1706 


WILLIAM  BECKFORD 


They  continued  their  way  throiig^h  the  multitude;  biit  not- 
withstanding their  confidence  at  first,  they  were  not  sufficiently 
composed  to  examine  with  attention  the  various  perspectives  of 
halls  and  of  g-allcries  that  opened  on  the  right  hand  and  left, 
which  were  all  illuminated  by  torches  and  braziers,  whose  flames 
rose  in  pyramids  to  the  centre  of  the  vault.  At  length  they 
came  to  a  place  where  long  curtains,  brocaded  with  crimson  and 
gold,  fell  from  all  parts  in  striking  confusion;  here  the  choirs 
and  dances  were  heard  no  longer,  the  light  which  glimmered 
came  from  afar.  • 

After  some  time  Vathek  and  Nouronihar  perceived  a  gleam 
brightening  through  the  drapery,  and  entered  a  vast  tabernacle 
carpeted  with  the  skins  of  leopards;  an  infinity  of  elders  with 
streaming  beards,  and  Afrits  in  complete  armor,  had  prostrated 
themselves  before  the  ascent  of  a  lofty  eminence,  on  the  top  of 
which,  upon  a  globe  of  fire,  sat  the  formidable  Eblis.  His 
person  was  that  of  a  young  man,  whose  noble  and  regular  feat- 
ures seemed  to  have  been  tarnished  by  malignant  vapors;  in  his 
large  eyes  appeared  both  pride  and  despair;  his  flowing  hair 
retained  some  resemblance  to  that  of  an  angel  of  light;  in  his 
hand,  which  thunder  had  blasted,  he  swayed  the  iron  sceptre 
that  causes  the  monster  Ouranabad,  the  Afrits,  and  all  the 
powers  of  the  abyss  to  tremble;  at  his  presence  the  heart  of  the 
Caliph  sunk  within  him,  and  for  the  first  time  he  fell  prostrate 
on  his  face.  Nouronihar,  however,  though  greatly  dismayed, 
could  not  help  admiring  the  person  of  Eblis;  for  she  expected  to 
have  seen  some  stupendous  giant.  Eblis,  with  a  voice  more  mild 
than  might  be  imagined,  but  such  as  transfused  through  the  soul 
the  deepest  melancholy,   said:  — 

"Creatures  of  clay,  I  receive  you  into  mine  empire;  ye  are 
numbered  amongst  my  adorers.  Enjoy  whatever  this  palace 
affords:  the  treasures  of  the  pre-Adamite  Sultans,  their  bickering 
sabres,  and  those  talismans  that  compel  the  Dives  to  open  the 
subterranean  expanses  of  the  mountain  of  Kaf,  which  communi- 
cate with  these.  There,  insatiable  as  your  curiosity  may  be, 
shall  you  find  sufficient  to  gratify  it;  you  shall  possess  the 
exclusive  privilege  of  entering  the  fortress  of  Aherman,  and  the 
halls  of  Argenk,  where  are  portrayed  all  creatures  endowed  with 
intelligence,  and  the  various  animals  that  inhabited  the  earth 
prior  to  the  creation  of  that  contemptible  being  whom  ye  denom- 
inate the  Father  of  Mankind." 


WILLIAM  BECKFORD 


1707 


Vathek  and  Nouronihar,  feeling  themselves  revived  and  en- 
couraged by  this  harangue,  eagerly  said  to  the  Giaour:  — 

<*  Bring  us  instantly  to  the  place  which  contains  these  precious 
talismans.  ** 

"  Come !  '^  answered  this  wicked  Dive,  with  his  malignant  grin, 
**  come !    and    possess  all    that   my    Sovereign   hath   promised,  and 


more.  ** 


He  then  conducted  them  into  a  long  aisle  adjoining  the  tab- 
ernacle, preceding  them  with  hasty  steps,  and  followed  by  his 
disciples  with  the  utmost  alacrity.  They  reached  at  length  a  hall 
of  great  extent,  and  covered  with  a  lofty  dome,  around  which 
appeared  fifty  portals  of  bronze,  secured  with  as  many  fastenings 
of  iron.  A  funereal  gloom  prevailed  over  the  whole  scene. 
Here,  upon  two  beds  of  incorruptible  cedar,  lay  recumbent  the 
fleshless  forms  of  the  pre-Adamite  kings,  who  had  been  mon- 
archs  of  the  whole  earth.  They  still  possessed  enough  of  life  to 
be  conscious  of  their  deplorable  condition;  their  eyes  retained  a 
melancholy  motion;  they  regarded  each  other  with  looks  of  the 
deepest  dejection,  each  holding  his  right  hand  motionless  on  his 
heart.  At  their  feet  were  inscribed  the  events  of  their  several 
reigns,  their  power,  their  pride,  and  their  crimes.  Soliman  Raad, 
Soliman  Daki,  and  Soliman  Di  Gian  Ben  Gian,  who,  after  having 
chained  up  the  Dives  in  the  dark  caverns  of  Kaf,  became  so  pre- 
sumptuous as  to  doubt  of  the  Supreme  Power, — all  these  main- 
tained great  state,  though  not  to  be  compared  with  the  eminence 
of  Soliman  Ben  Daoud  [Solomon  the  son  of  David]. 

This  king,  so  renowned  for  his  wisdom,  was  on  the  loftiest 
elevation,  and  placed  immediately  under  the  dome;  he  appeared 
to  possess  more  animation  than  the  rest,  though  from  time  to 
time  he  labored  with  profound  sighs,  and  like  his  companions, 
kept  his  right  hand  on  his  heart;  yet  his  countenance  was  more 
composed,  and  he  seemed  to  be  listening  to  the  sullen  roar  of  a 
vast  cataract,  visible  in  part  through  the  grated  portals;  this 
was  the  only  sound  that  intruded  on  the  silence  of  these  dole- 
fvil  mansions.  A  range  of  brazen  vases  surrounded  the  eleva- 
tion. 

"  Remove  the  covers  from  these  cabalistic  depositaries,  '*  said 
the  Giaour  to  Vathek,  "  and  avail  thyself  of  the  talismans,  which 
will  break  asunder  all  these  gates  of  bronze,  and  not  only  ren- 
der thee  master  of  the  treasures  contained  within  them,  but  also 
of  the  spirits  by  which  they  are  guarded.^* 


lyoS 


WILLIAM   BECKFORD 


The  Caliph,  whom  this  ominous  preHminar}^  had  entirely  dis- 
concerted, approached  the  vases  with  faltering  footsteps,  and  was 
ready  to  sink  with  terror  when  he  heard  the  groans  of  Soliman. 
As  he  proceeded,  a  voice  from  the  livid  lips  of  the  Prophet 
articulated  these  words:  — 

'*  In  my  lifetime  I  filled  a  magnificent  throne,  having  on  my 
right  hand  twelve  thousand  seats  of  gold,  where  the  patriarchs 
and  the  prophets  heard  my  doctrines;  on  my  left  the  sages  and 
doctors,  upon  as  many  thrones  of  silver,  were  present  at  all  my 
decisions.  Whilst  I  thus  administered  justice  to  innumerable 
multitudes,  the  birds  of  the  air  librating  over  me  served  as  a 
canopy  from  the  rays  of  the  sun;  my  people  flourished,  and  my 
palace  rose  t(j  the  clouds;  I  erected  a  temple  to  the  Most  High 
which  was  the  wonder  of  the  universe.  But  I  basely  suffered 
myself  to  be  seduced  by  the  love  of  women,  and  a  curiosity  that 
could  not  be  restrained  by  sublunary  things;  I  listened  to  the 
counsels  of  Aherman  and  the  daughter  of  Pharaoh,  and  adored 
fire  and  the  hosts  of  heaven;  I  forsook  the  holy  city,  and  com- 
manded the  Genii  to  rear  the  stupendous  palace  of  Istakhar,  and 
the  terrace  of  the  watch-towers,  each  of  which  was  consecrated 
to  a  star.  There  for  a  while  I  enjoyed  myself  in  the  zenith  of 
glory  and  pleasure;  not  only  men,  but  supernatural  existences 
were  subject  also  to  my  will.  I  began  to  think,  as  these  un- 
happy monarchs  aroimd  had  already  thought,  that  the  vengeance 
of  Heaven  was  asleep,  when  at  once  the  thunder  burst  my 
structures  asunder  and  precipitated  me  hither;  where  however  I 
do  not  remain,  like  the  other  inhabitants,  totally  destitute  of 
hope,  for  an  angel  of  light  hath  revealed  that,  in  consideration 
of  the  piety  of  my  early  youth,  my  woes  shall  come  to  an  end 
when  this  cataract  shall  for  ever  cease  to  flow.  Till  then  I  am 
in  torments,  ineffable  torments!  an  unrelenting  fire  preys  on  my 
heart. » 

Having  uttered  this  exclamation,  vSoliman  raised  his  hands 
towards  Heaven  in  token  of  supplication,  and  the  Caliph  dis- 
cerned through  his  bosom,  which  was  transparent  as  crystal,  his 
heart  enveloped  in  flames.  At  a  sight  so  full  of  horror,  Nou- 
ronihar  fell  back  like  one  petrified  into  the  arms  of  Vathek.  who 
cried  out  with  a  convulsive  sob:  — 

*'  O  Giaour !  whither  hast  thou  brought  us  ?  Allow  us  to 
depart,  and  I  will  relinquish  all  thou  hast  promised.  O  Ma- 
homet !  remains  there  no  more  mercy  ?  *^ 


WILLIAM   BECKFORD  lyog 

"  None !  none  I  **  replied  the  malicious  Dive.  **  Know,  miser- 
able prince!  thou  art  now  in  the  abode  of  vengeance  and  despair; 
thy  heart  also  will  be  kindled,  like  those  of  the  other  votaries  of 
Eblis.  A  few  days  are  allotted  thee  previous  to  this  fatal  period. 
Employ  them  as  thou  wilt:  recline  on  these  heaps  of  gold; 
command  the  Infernal  Potentates;  range  at  thy  pleasure  through 
these  immense  subterranean  domains;  no  barrier  shall  be  shut 
against  thee.  As  for  me,  I  have  fulfilled  my  mission ;  I  now 
leave   thee  to  thyself.  **     At   these  words  he  vanished. 

The  Caliph  and  Nouronihar  remained  in  the  most  abject 
affliction;  their  tears  unable  to  flow,  scarcely  could  they  sup- 
port themselves.  At  length,  taking  each  other  despondingly  by 
the  hand,  they  went  faltering  from  this  fatal  hall,  indifferent 
which  way  they  turned  their  steps.  Every  portal  opened  at  their 
approach;  the  Dives  fell  prostrate  before  them;  every  reservoir 
of  riches  was  disclosed  to  their  view :  but  they  no  longer  felt  the 
incentives  of  curiosity,  pride,  or  avarice.  With  like  apathy  they 
heard  the  chorus  of  Genii,  and  saw  the  stately  banquets  pre- 
pared to  regale  them.  They  went  wandering  on  from  chamber 
to  chamber,  hall  to  hall,  and  gallery  to  gallery,  all  without 
bounds  or  limit,  all  distinguishable  by  the  same  lowering  gloom, 
all  adorned  with  the  same  awful  grandeur,  all  traversed  by  per- 
sons in  search  of  repose  and  consolation,  but  who  sought  them 
in  vain;  for  every  one  carried  within  hiin  a  heart  tormented  in 
flames.  Shunned  by  these  various  sufferers,  who  seemed  by  their 
looks  to  be  upbraiding  the  partners  of  their  guilt,  they  withdrew 
from  them,  to  wait  in  direful  suspense  the  moment  which  should 
render  them  to  each  other  the  like  objects  of  terror. 

^^What!^^  exclaimed  Nouronihar;  ^^  will  the  time  come  when  I 
shall  snatch  my  hand  from  thine  ?  *^ 

"  Ah,  '^  said  Vathek ;  ^*  and  shall  my  eyes  ever  cease  to  drink 
from  thine  long  draughts  of  enjoyment!  Shall  the  moments  of 
our  reciprocal  ecstasies  be  reflected  on  with  horror!  It  was  not 
thou  that  broughtest  me  hither:  the  principles  by  which  Carathis 
perverted  vay  youth  have  been  the  sole  cause  of  my  perdition !  " 
Having  given  vent  to  these  painful  expressions,  he  called  to  an 
Afrit,  who  was  stirring  up  one  of  the  braziers,  and  bade  him 
fetch  the  Princess  Carathis  from  the  palace  of  Samarah. 

After  issuing  these  orders,  the  Caliph  and  Nouronihar  con- 
tinued walking  amidst  the  silent  crowd,  till  they  heard  voices  at 
the  end  of  the  gallery.      Presuming  them  to  proceed  from  some 


jyio  WILLIAM   BECKFORD  • 

unhappy  beings  who,  like  themselves,  were  awaiting  their  final 
doom,  they  followed  the  sound,  and  found  it  to  come  from  a 
small  square  chamber,  where  they  discovered  sitting  on  sofas 
five  young  men  of  goodly  figure,  and  a  lovely  female,  who  were 
all  holding  a  melancholy  conversation  by  the  glimmering  of  a 
lonely  lamp;  each  had  a  gloomy  and  forlorn  air,  and  two  of 
them  were  embracing  each  other  with  great  tenderness.  On 
seeing  the  Caliph  and  the  daughter  of  Fakreddin  enter,  they 
arose,  saluted  and  gave  them  place;  then  he  who  appeared  the 
most  considerable  of  the  group  addressed  himself  thus  to  Vathek: 

**  Strangers!  —  who  doubtless  are  in  the  same  state  of  sus- 
pense with  ourselves,  as  you  do  not  yet  bear  your  hand  on  your 
heart,  —  if  you  are  come  hither  to  pass  the  interval  allotted  pre- 
vious to  the  infliction  of  our  common  punishment,  condescend  to 
relate  the  adventures  that  have  brought  you  to  this  fatal  place, 
and  we  in  return  will  acquaint  you  with  ours,  which  deserve  but 
too  well  to  be  heard.  We  will  trace  back  our  crimes  to  their 
source,  though  we  are  not  permitted  to  repent;  this  is  the  only 
employment  suited  to  wretches  like  us !  '^ 

The  Caliph  and  Nouronihar  assented  to  the  proposal,  and 
Vathek  began,  not  without  tears  and  lamentations,  a  sincere  re- 
cital of  every  circumstance  that  had  passed.  When  the  aliflicting 
narrative  was  closed,  the  yoimg  man  entered  on  his  own.  Each 
person  proceeded  in  order,  and  when  the  fourth  prince  had 
reached  the  midst  of  his  adventures,  a  sudden  noise  interrupted 
him,  which  caused  the  vault  to  tremble  and  to  open. 

Immediately  a  cloud  descended,  which,  gradually  dissipating, 
discovered  Carathis  on  the  back  of  an  Afrit,  who  grievously  com- 
plained of  his  burden.  She,  instantly  springing  to  the  ground, 
advanced  towards  her  son  and  said:  — 

**  What  dost  thou  here  in  this  little  square  chamber  ?  As  the 
Dives  are  become  subject  to  thy  beck,  I  expected  to  have  found 
thee  on  the  throne  of  the  pre-Adamite  Kings.  '* 

"  Execrable  woman !  **  answered  the  Caliph ;  "  cursed  be  the 
day  thou  gavest  me  birth!  Go,  follow  this  Afrit,  let  him  conduct 
thee  to  the  hall  of  the  Prophet  Soliman ;  there  thou  wilt  learn  to 
what  these  palaces  are  destined,  and  how  much  I  ought  to  abhor 
the  impious  knowledge  thou  hast  taught  me.^* 

**  The  height  of  power  to  which  thou  art  arrived  has  certainly 
turned  thy  brain, '^  answered  Carathis;  ^*  but  I  ask  no  more  than 
permission  to  show  my  respect  for  the  Prophet.     It  is  however 


WILLIAM   BECKFORD  1^,1 

proper  thou  sTioiildest  know  that  (as  the  Afrit  has  informed  me 
neither  of  us  shall  return  to  Samarah)  I  requested  his  permission 
to  arrange  my  affairs,  and  he  politely  consented:  availing  myself 
therefore  of  the  few  moments  allowed  me,  I  set  fire  to  the  tower, 
and  consumed  in  it  the  mutes,  negresses,  and  serpents  which 
have  rendered  me  so  much  good  service;  nor  should  I  have  been 
less  kind  to  Morakanabad,  had  he  not  prevented  me  by  deserting 
at  last  to  my  brother.  As  for  Bababalouk,  who  had  the  folly  to 
return  to  Samarah,  and  all  the  good  brotherhood  to  provide  hus- 
bands for  thy  wives,  I  undoubtedly  would  have  put  them  to  the 
torture,  could  I  but  have  allowed  them  the  time;  being  however 
in  a  hurry,  I  only  hung  him  after  having  caught  him  in  a  snare 
with  thy  wives,  whilst  them  I  buried  alive  by  the  help  of  my 
negresses,  who  thus  spent  their  last  moments  greatly  to  their 
satisfaction.  With  respect  to  Dilara,  who  ever  stood  high  in  my 
favor,  she  hath  evinced  the  greatness  of  her  mind  by  fixing  her- 
self near  in  the  service  of  one  of  the  Magi,  and  I  think  will 
soon  be  our  own.'* 

Vathek,  too  much  cast  down,  to  express  the  indignation  excited 
by  such  a,  discourse,  ordered  the  Afrit  to  remove  Carathis  from 
his  presence,  and  continued  immersed  in  thought,  which  his  com- 
panion durst  not  disturb. 

Carathis,  however,  eagerly  entered  the  dome  of  Soliman,  and 
without  regarding  in  the  least  the  groans  of  the  Prophet,  un- 
dauntedly removed  the  covers  of  the  vases,  and  violently  seized 
on  the  talismans.  Then,  with  a  voice  more  loud  than  had  hith- 
erto been  heard  within  these  mansions,  she  compelled  the  Dives 
to  disclose  to  her  the  most  secret  treasures,  the  most  profound 
stores,  which  the  Afrit  himself  had  not  seen;  she  passed  by  rapid 
descents  known  only  to  Eblis  and  his  most  favored  poten- 
tates, and  thus  penetrated  the  very  entrails  of  the  earth,  where 
breathes  the  Sansar,  or  icy  wind  of  death.  Nothing  appalled  her 
dauntless  soul;  she  perceived  however  in  all  the  inmates,  who 
bore  their  hands  on  their  hearts,  a  little  singularity,  not  much  to 
her  taste.  As  she  was  emerging  from  one  of  the  abysses,  Eblis 
stood  forth  to  her  view;  but  notwithstanding  he  displayed  the 
full  effulgence  of  his  infernal  majesty,  she  preserved  her  counte- 
nance unaltered,  and  even  paid  her  compliments  with  consider- 
able firmness. 

This  superb  Monarch  thus  answered:  —  "Princess,  whose 
knowledge    and    whose   crimes  have  merited  a  conspicuous  rank 


J -12  WILLIAM   BECKFORD 

in  my  empire,  thou  dost  well  to  employ  the  leisure  that  remains; 
for  the  flames  and  torments  which  are  ready  to  seize  on  thy 
heart  will  not  fail  to  provide  thee  with  full  employment.**  He 
said  this,  and  was  lost  in  the  ctirtains  of  his  tabernacle. 

Carathis  paused  for  a  moment  with  surprise;  but,  resolved  to 
follow  the  advice  of  Eblis,  she  assembled  all  the  choirs  of  Genii, 
and  all  the  Dives,  to  pay  her  homage ;  thus  marched  she  in 
triumph  through  a  vapor  of  perfumes,  amidst  the  acclamations 
of  all  the  malignant  spirits,  with  most  of  whom  she  had  formed 
a  previous  acquaintance.  She  even  attempted  to  dethrone  one  of 
the  Solimans  for  the  purpose  of  usurping  his  place,  when  a 
voice  proceeding  from  the  abyss  of  Death  proclaimed,  "All  is 
accomplished !  **  Instantaneously  the  haughty  forehead  of  the 
intrepid  princess  was  corrugated  with  agony;  she  uttered  a  tre- 
mendous yell,  and  fixed,  no  more  to  be  withdrawn,  her  right 
hand  upon  her  heart,  which  was  become  a  receptacle  of  eternal 
fire. 

In  this  delirium,  forgetting  all  ambitious  projects  and  her 
thirst  for  that  knowledge  which  should  ever  be  hidden  from 
mortals,  she  overturned  the  offerings  of  the  Genii,  and  having 
execrated  the  hour  she  was  begotten  and  the  womb  that  had 
borne  her,  glanced  off  in  a  whirl  that  rendered  her  invisible,  and 
continued  to  revolve  without  intermission. 

At  almost  the  same  instant  the  same  voice  announced  to  the 
Caliph,  Nouronihar,  the  five  princes,  and  the  princess,  the  awful 
and  irrevocable  decree.  Their  hearts  immediately  took  fire,  and 
they  at  once  lost  the  most  precious  of  the  gifts  of  Heaven  — 
Hope.  These  imhappy  beings  recoiled  with  looks  of  the  most 
furious  distraction;  Vathek  beheld  in  the  eyes  of  Nouronihar 
nothing  but  rage  and  vengeance,  nor  could  she  discern  aught  in 
his  but  aversion  and  despair.  The  two  princes  who  were  friends, 
and  till  that  moment  had  preserved  their  attachment,  shrunk 
back,  gnashing  their  teeth  with  mutual  and  unchangeable  hatred. 
Kalilah  and  his  sister  made  reciprocal  gestures  of  imprecation, 
whilst  the  two  other  princes  testified  their  horror  for  each  other 
by  the  most  ghastly  convulsions,  and  screams  that  could  not  be 
smothered.  All  severally  plunged  themselves  into  the  accursed 
multitude,  there  to  wander  in  an  eternity  of  unabating  anguish. 


R 


HENRY   WARD   BEECHER 


.ilY:)3.?v9.   a51k^I^    'i5iY::^'\ 


I7I3 


HENRY  WARD   BEECHER 

(1813-1887) 

BY  LYMAN   ABBOTT 

|he  life  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher  may  be  either  compressed 
into  a  sentence  or  expanded  into  a  volume.  He  was  born 
in  Litchfield,  Connecticut,  on  the  24th  day  of  June,  181 3, 
the  child  of  the  well-known  Lyman  Beecher;  graduated  at  Amherst 
College  in  1834,  and  subsequently  studied  at  Lane  Theological  Semi- 
nary (Cincinnati),  of  which  his  father  was  the  president;  began  his 
ministerial  life  as  pastor  of  a  Home  Missionary  (Presbyterian)  church 
at  the  little  village  of  Lawrenceburg,  twenty  miles  south  of  Cin- 
cinnati on  the  Ohio  River;  was  both  sexton  and  pastor,  swept  the 
chvirch,  built  the  fires,  lighted  the  lamps,  rang  the  bell,  and  preached 
the  sermons;  was  called  to  the  pastorate  of  the  First  Presbyterian 
Church  of  Indianapolis,  the  capital  of  Indiana,  where  he  remained  for 
eight  years,  1839  to  1847,  and  where  his  preaching  soon  won  for  him 
a  reputation  throughout  the  State,  and  his  occasional  writing  a  repu- 
tation beyond  its  boundaries;  thence  was  called  in  1847  to  be  the  first 
pastor  of  the  newly  organized  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  where  he 
remained  with  an  ever  increasing  reputation  as  preacher,  lecturer, 
orator,  and  writer,  until  the  day  of  his  death,  March  8th,   1887. 

Such  is  the  outline  of  a  life,  the  complete  story  of  which  would 
be  the  history  of  the  United  States  during  the  most  critical  half- 
century  of  the  nation's  existence.  Living  in  an  epoch  when  the  one 
overshadowing  political  issue  was  pre-eminently  a  moral  issue,  and 
when  no  man  could  be  a  faithful  preacher  of  righteousness  and  not  a 
political  preacher;  concerned  in  whatever  concerned  humanity;  believ- 
ing that  love  is  the  essence  of  all  true  religion,  and  that  love  to  God 
is  impossible  without  love  to  man;  moral  reformer  not  less  than  gos- 
pel preacher,  and  statesman  even  more  than  theologian;  throwing 
himself  into  the  anti-slavery  conflict  with  all  the  courage  of  a  heroic 
nature  and  all  the  ardor  of  an  intensely  impulsive  one, — he  stands 
among  the  first  half-score  of  writers,  orators,  reformers,  statesmen, 
and  soldiers,  who  combined  to  make  the  half-century  from  1835  to 
1885  as  brilliant  and  as  heroic  as  any  in  human  history. 

The  greatness  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher  consisted  not  so  much  in 
a  predominance  of  any  one  quality  as  in  a  remarkable  combina- 
tion of  many.  His  physique  justified  the  well-known  characteriza- 
tion of   Mr.    Fowler,  the   phrenologist,    "Splendid   animal.^*      He   was 

III — locf 


17  14  HENRY  WARD   BEECHER 

always  an  eager  student,  though  his  methods  were  desultory.  He  was 
iamiliar  with  the  latest  thought  in  philosophy,  had  studied  Herbert 
Spencer  before  his  works  were  republished  in  the  United  States,  yet 
was  a  child  among  children,  and  in  his  old  age  retained  the  char- 
acteristic faults  and  virtues  of  childhood,  and  its  innocent  impul- 
siveness. 

His  imagination  might  have  made  him  a  poet,  his  human  sym- 
pathies a  dramatic  poet,  had  not  his  strong  common-sense  kept  him 
always  in  touch  with  the  actualities  of  life,  and  a  masterful  con- 
science compelled  him  to  use  his  aesthetic  faculties  in  sterner  service 
than  in  the  entertainment  of  mankind.  The  intensity  of  his  moral 
nature  enhanced  rather  than  subdued  his  exuberant  humor,  which 
love  prevented  from  becoming  satire,  and  seriousness  preserved  from 
degenerating  into  wit.  His  native  faculty  of  mimicry  led  men  to 
call  him  an  actor,  yet  he  wholly  lacked  the  essential  quality  of  a 
good  actor," — power  to  take  on  another's  character, —  and  used  the 
mimic  art  only  to  interpret  the  truth  which  at  the  moment  possessed 
him. 

Such  power  of  passion  as  was  his  is  not  often  seen  mated  to  such 
self-control;  for  while  he  spoke  with  utter  abandon,  he  rarely  if  ever 
did  so  until  he  had  carefully  deliberated  the  cause  he  was  espousing. 
He  thought  himself  deficient  in  memory,  and  in  fact  rarely  borrowed 
illustrations  from  his  reading  either  of  history  or  of  literature ;  but 
his  keenness  of  observation  photographed  living  scenes  upon  an  un- 
fading memory  which  years  after  he  could  and  did  produce  at  will. 
All  these  contrary  elements  of  his  strangely  composite  though  not 
incongruous  character  entered  into  his  style, —  or,  to  speak  more 
accurately,  his  styles, —  and  make  any  analysis  of  them  within  rea' 
sonable  limits   difficult,    if  not  impossible. 

For  the  writer  is  known  by  his  style  as  the  wearer  by  his  clothes. 
Even  if  it  be  no  native  product  of  the  author's  mind,  but  a  conscious 
imitation  of  carefully  studied  models, —  what  I  may  call  a  tailor- 
made  style,  fashioned  in  a  vain  endeavor  to  impart  sublimity  to 
commonplace  thinking, — the  poverty  of  the  author  is  thereby  re- 
vealed, much  as  the  boor  is  most  clearly  disclosed  when  wearing 
ill-at-ease,  unaccustomed  broadcloth.  Mr.  Beecher's  style  was  not 
artificial ;  its  faults  as  well  as  its  excellences  were  those  of  extreme 
naturalness.  He  always  wrote  with  fury;  rarely  did  he  correct 
with  phlegm.  His  sermons  were  published  as  they  fell  from  his 
lips, —  correct  and  revise  he  would  not.  The  too  few  editorials  which 
he  wrote,  on  the  eve  of  the  Civil  War,  were  written  while  the  press 
was  impatiently  waiting  for  them,  were  often  taken  page  by  page 
from  his  hand,  and  were  habitually  left  unread  by  him  to  be  cor- 
rected in  proof  by  others. 


HENRY  WARD   BEECHER  lyie 

His  lighter  contributions  to  the  New  York  Ledger  were  thrown  off 
in  the  same  way,  generally  while  the  messenger  waited  to  take  them 
to  the  editorial  sanctum.  It  was  his  habit,  whether  unconscious  or 
deliberate  I  do  not  know,  to  speak  to  a  great  congregation  with  the 
freedom  of  personal  conversation,  and  to  write  for  the  press  with  as 
little  reserve  as  to  an  intimate  friend.  This  habit  of  taking  the  pub- 
lic into  his  confidence  was  one  secret  of  his  power,  but  it  was  also 
the  cause  of  those  violations  of  conventionality  in  public  address 
which  were  a  great  charm  to  some  and  a  grave  defect  to  others. 
There  are  few  writers  or  orators  who  have  addressed  such  audiences 
with  such  effect,  whose  style  has  been  so  true  and  unmodified  a 
reflection  of  their  inner  life.  The  title  of  one  of  his  most  popular 
volumes  might  be  appropriately  made  the  title  of  them  all  —  <  Life 
Thoughts.* 

But  while  his  style  was  wholly  unartificial,  it  was  no  product  of 
mere  careless  genius;  carelessness  never  gives  a  product  worth  pos- 
sessing. The  excellences  of  Mr.  Beecher's  style  were  due  to  a 
careful  study  of  the  great  English  writers;  its  defects  to  a  tempera- 
ment too  eager  to  endure  the  dull .  work  of  correction.  In  his  early 
manhood  he  studied  the  old  English  divines,  not  for  their  thoughts, 
which  never  took  hold  of  him,  but  for  their  style,  of  which  he  was 
enamored.  The  best  characterization  of  South  and  Barrow  I  ever 
heard  he  gave  me  once  in  a  casual  conversation.  The  great  English 
novelists  he  knew ;  Walter  Scott's  novels,  of  which  he  had  several  edi- 
tions in  his  library,  were  great  favorites  with  him,  but  he  read  them 
rather  for  the  beauty  of  their  descriptive  passages  than  for  their 
romantic  and  dramatic  interest.  Ruskin's  ^  Modern  Painters  *  he  both 
used  himself  and  recommended  to  others  as  a  text-book  in  the  obser- 
vation of  nature,  and  certain   passages  in  them  he  read  and   re-read. 

But  in  his  reading  he  followed  the  bent  of  his  own  mind  rather 
than  any  prescribed  system.  Neither  in  his  public  utterances  nor  in 
his  private  conversation  did  he  indicate  much  indebtedness  to  Shake- 
speare among  the  earlier  writers,  nor  to  Emerson  or  Carlyle  among 
the  moderns.  Though  not  unfamiliar  with  the  greatest  English 
poets,  and  the  great  Greek  poets  in  translations,  he  was  less  a 
reader  of  poetry  than  of  poetical  prose.  He  had,  it  is  true,  not 
only    read   but    carefully    compared    Dante's    < Inferno*    with    Milton's 

<  Paradise    Lost*;    still    it    was   not   the    <  Paradise    Lost,*    it    was    the 

<  Areopagitica  *  which  he  frequently  read  on  Saturday  nights,  for  the 
sublimity  of  its  style  and  the  inspiration  it  afforded  to  the  imagina- 
tion. He  was  singularly  deficient  in  verbal  memory,  a  deficienc)'- 
which  is  usiially  accompanied  by  a  relatively  slight  appreciation  ot 
the  mere  rhythmic  beauty  of  literary  form.  It  is  my  impression 
that  for  amorous  poems,  such  as  Moore's  songs,  or  even  Shake- 
speare's sonnets,  and  for  purely  descriptive  poetry,  such  as  the  best 


1716  HENRY   WARD   BEECHER 

of  *  Childe  Harold  *  and  certain  poems  of  Wordsworth,  he  cared  com- 
paratively little. 

But  he  delighted  in  religious  poetry,  whether  the  religion  was 
that  of  the  pagan  Greek  Tragedies,  the  mediaeval  Dante,  or  the 
Puritan  Milton.  He  was  a  great  lover  of  the  best  hymns,  and  with 
a  catholicity  of  affection  which  included  the  Calvinist  Toplady,  the 
Arminian  Wesley,  the  Roman  Catholic  Faber,  and  the  Unitarian 
Holmes.  Generally,  however,  he  cared  more  for  poetry  of  strength 
than  for  that  of  fancy  or  sentiment.  It  was  the  terrific  strength  in 
Watts's  famous  hymn  beginning 

"My  thoughts  on  awful  subjects  dwell, 
Damnation  and  the  dead,» 

which  caused  him  to  include  it  in  the  <  Plymouth  Collection,  abhor- 
rent as  was  the  theology  of  that  hymn  alike  to  his  heart  and  to  his 
conscience. 

In  any  estimate  of  Mr.  Beecher's  style,  it  must  be  remembered 
that  he  was  both  by  temperament  and  training  a  preacher.  He  was 
brought  up  not  in  a  literary,  but  in  a  didactic  atmosphere.  If  it 
were  as  true  as  it  is  false  that  art  exists  only  for  art's  sake,  Mr. 
Beecher  would  not  have  been  an  artist.  His  art  always  had  a  pur- 
pose; generally  a  distinct  moral  purpose.  An  overwhelming  propor- 
tion of  his  contributions  to  literature  consists  of  sermons  or  extracts 
from  sermons,  or  addresses  not  less  distinctively  didactic.  His  one 
novel  was  written  avowedly  to  rectify  some  common  misapprehensions 
as  to  New  England  life  and  character.  Even  his  lighter  papers, 
products  of  the  mere  exuberance  of  a  nature  too  full  of  every  phase 
of  life  to  be  quiescent,  indicated  the  intensity  of  a  purposeful  soul, 
much  as  the  sparks  in  a  blacksmith's  shop  come  from  the  very  vigor 
with  which  the  artisan  is  shaping  on  the  anvil  the  nail  or  the  shoe. 

But  Mr.  Beecher  was  what  Mr.  Spurgeon  has  called  him,  « the 
most  myriad-minded  man  since  Shakespeare  '^ ;  and  such  a  mind  must 
both  deal  with  many  topics,  and  if  it  be  true  to  itself,  exhibit  many 
styles.  If  one  were  to  apply  to  Mr.  Beecher's  writings  the  methods 
which  have  sometimes  been  applied  by  certain  Higher  Critics  to  the 
Bible,  he  would  conclude  that  the  man  who  wrote  the  Sermons  on 
Evolution  and  Theology  could  not  possibly  have  also  written  the 
humorous  description  of  a  house  with  all  the  modern  improvements. 
Sometimes  grave,  sometimes  gay,  sometimes  serious,  sometimes 
sportive,  concentrating  his  whole  power  on  whatever  he  was  doing, 
working  with  all  his  might  but  also  playing  with  all  his  might,  when 
he  is  on  a  literary  frolic  the  reader  would  hardly  suspect  that  he  was 
ever  dominated  by  a  strenuous  moral  purpose.  Yet  there  were  cer- 
tain common  elements  in  Mr.  Beecher's  character  which  appeared  in 
his  various   styles,  though   mixed   in   very   different   proportions    and 


HENRY  WARD   BEECHER  I^I^ 

producing  very  different  combinations.  Within  the  limits  of  such  a 
study  as  this,  it  must  suffice  to  indicate  in  very  general  terms  some 
of  these  elements  of  character  which  appear  in  and  really  produce 
his  literary  method. 

Predominant  among  them  was  a  capacity  to  discriminate  between 
the  essentials  and  the  accidentals  of  any  subject,  a  philosophical  per- 
spective which  enabled  him  to  see  the  controlling  connection  and  to 
discard  quickly  such  minor  details  as  tended  to  obscure  and  to  per- 
plex. Thus  a  habit  was  formed  which  led  him  not  infrequently 
to  ignore  necessary  limitations  and  qualifications,  and  to  make  him 
scientifically  inaccurate,  though  vitally  and  ethically  true.  It  was 
this  quality  which  led  critics  to  say  of  him  that  he  was  no  theo- 
logian, though  it  is  doubtful  whether  any  preacher  in  America  since 
Jonathan  Edwards  has  exerted  a  greater  influence  on  its  theology. 
But  this  quality  imparted  clearness  to  his  style.  He  always  knew 
what  he  wanted  to  say  and  said  it  clearly.  He  sometimes  produced 
false  impressions  by  the  very  strenuousness  of  his  aim  and  the 
vehemence  of  his  passion;  but  he  was  never  foggy,  obscure,  or 
ambiguous. 

This  clearness  of  style  was  facilitated  by  the  singleness  of  his  pur- 
pose. He  never  considered  what  was  safe,  prudent,  or  expedient  to 
say,  never  reflected  upon  the  effect  which  his  speech  might  have  on 
his  reputation  or  his  influence,  considered  only  how  he  could  make 
his  hearers  apprehend  the  truth  as  he  saw  it.  He  therefore  never 
played  with  words,  never  used  them  with  a  double  meaning,  or 
employed  them  to  conceal  his  thoughts.  He  was  indeed  utterly 
incapable  of  making  a  speech  unless  he  had  a  purpose  to  accomplish; 
when  he  tried  he  invariably  failed ;  no  orator  ever  had  less  ability  to 
roll  off  airy  nothings  for  the  entertainment  of  an  audience. 

Coupled  with  this  clearness  of  vision  and  singleness  of  purpose 
was  a  sympathy  with  men  singularly  broad  and  alert.  He  knew  the 
way  to  men's  minds,  and  adapted  his  method  to  the  minds  he  wished 
to  reach.  This  quality  put  him  at  once  en  rapport  with  his  auditors, 
and  with  men  of  widely  different  mental  constitution.  Probably  no 
preacher  has  ever  habitually  addressed  so  heterogeneous  a  congre- 
gation as  that  which  he  attracted  to  Plymouth  Church.  In  his  famous 
speech  at  the  Herbert  Spencer  dinner  he  was  listened  to  with 
equally  rapt  attention  by  the  great  philosopher  and  by  the  French 
waiters,  who  stopped  in  their  service,  arrested  and  held  by  his 
mingled  humor,  philosophy,  and  restrained  emotion.  This  human 
sympathy  gave  a  peculiar  dramatic  quality  to  his  imagination.  He 
not  only  recalled  and  reproduced  material  images  from  the  past 
with  great  vividness,  he  re-created  in  his  own  mind  the  experiences 
of  men    whose   mold   was   entirely    dift'erent   from   his   own.      As   an 


I7i8 


HENRY   WARD   BEECHER 


illustration  of  this,  a  comparison  of  two  sermons  on  Jacob  before 
Pharaoh,  one  by  Dr.  Talmage,  the  other  by  Mr.  Beecher,  is  interest- 
ing and  instructive.  Dr.  Talmage  devotes  his  imagination  wholly  to 
reproducing  the  outward  circumstances, —  the  court  in  its  splendor 
and  the  patriarch  with  his  wagons,  his  household,  and  his  stuff;  this 
scene  Mr.  Beecher  etches  vividly  but  carelessly  in  a  few  outlines,  then 
proceeds  to  delineate  with  care  the  imagined  feelings  of  the  king, 
awed  despite  his  imperial  splendor  by  the  spiritual  majesty  of  the 
peasant  herdsman.  Yet  Mr.  Beecher  could  paint  the  outer  circum- 
stances with  care  when  he  chose  to  do  so.  Some  of  his  flower  pictures 
in  <  Fruits,  Flowers,  and  Farming  *  will  always  remain  classic  models 
of  descriptive  literature,  the  more  amazing  that  some  of  them  are 
portraits  of  flowers  he  had  never  seen  when  he  wrote  the  d'escription. 

While  his  imagination  illuminated  nearly  all  he  said  or  wrote,  it 
was  habitually  the  instrument  of  some  moral  purpose;  he  rarely 
ornamented  for  ornament's  sake.  His  pictures  gave  beauty,  but  they 
were  employed  not  to  give  beauty  but  clearness.  He  was  t;hus  saved 
from  mixed  metaphors,  the  common  fault  of  imaginative  writings 
which  are  directed  to  no  end,  and  thus  are  liable  to  become  first 
lawless,  then  false,  finally  self-contradictory  and  absurd.  The  mass- 
ive Norman  pillars  of  Durham  Cathedral  are  marred  by  the  attempt 
which  some  architect  has  made  to  give  them  grace  and  beaut}^  by 
adding  ornamentation.  Rarely  if  ever  did  Mr.  Beecher  fall  into  the 
error  of  thus  mixing  in  an  incongruous  structure  two  architectural 
styles.  He  knew  when  to  use  the  Norman  strength  and  solidity,  and 
when  the  Gothic  lightness  and  grace. 

Probably  his  keen  sense  of  humor  would  have  preserved  him  from 
this  not  imcommon  error.  It  is  said  that  the  secret  of  humor  is  the 
quick  perception  of  incongruous  relations.  This  would  seem  to  have 
been  the  secret  of  Mr.  Beecher's  humor,  for  he  had  in  an  eminent 
degree  what  the  phrenologists  call  the  faculty  of  comparison.  This 
was  seen  in  his  arguments,  which  were  more  often  analogical  than 
logical;  seen  not  less  in  that  his  humor  was  not  employed  with 
deliberate  intent  to  relieve  a  too  serious  discourse,  but  was  itself  the 
very  product  of  his  seriousness.  He  was  humorous,  but  rarely  witty, 
as,  for  the  same  reason,  he  was  imaginative  but  not  fanciful.  For 
both  his  imagination  and  his  humor  were  the  servants  of  his  moral 
purpose;  and  as  he  did  not  employ  the  one  merely  as  a  pleasing 
ornament,  so  he  never  went  out  of  his  way  to  introduce  a  joke  or  a 
funny  story  to  make  a  laugh. 

Speaking  broadly,  Mr.  Beecher's  style  as  an  orator  passed  through 
three  epochs.  In  the  first,  best  illustrated  by  his  <  Sermons  to  Young 
Men,>  preached  in  Indianapolis,  his  imagination  is  the  predominant 
faculty.     Those    sermons    will    remain    in    the    history    of  homiletical 


HENRY   WARD   BEECHER  j-io 

literature  as  remarkable  of  their  kind,  but  not  as  a  pulpit  classic  for 
all  times;  for  the  critic  will  truly  say  that  the  imagination  is  too 
exuberant,  the  dramatic  element  sometimes  becoming  melodramatic, 
and  the  style  lacking  in  simplicity.  In  the  second  epoch,  best  illus- 
trated by  the  Harper  and  Brothers  edition  of  his  selected  sermons, 
preached  in  the  earlier  and  middle  portion  of  his  Brooklyn  ministry, 
the  imagination  is  still  pervasive,  but  no  longer  predominant.  The 
dramatic  fire  still  burns,  but  with  a  steadier  heat.  Imagination,  dra- 
matic instinct,  personal  sympathy,  evangelical  passion,  and  a  growing 
philosophic  thought-structure,  combine  to  make  the  sermons  of  this 
epoch  the  best  illustration  of  his  power  as  a  popular  preacher.  In 
each  sermon  he  holds  up  a  truth  like  his  favorite  opal,  turning  it 
from  side  to  side  and  flashing  its  opalescent  light  upon  his  congre- 
gation, but  so  as  always  to  show  the  secret  fire  at  the  heart  of  it. 
In  the  third  epoch,  best  illustrated  by  his  sermons  on  Evolution  and 
Theology,  the  philosophic  quality  of  his  mind  predominates;  his 
imagination  is  subservient  to  and  the  instrument  of  clear  statement, 
his  dramatic  quality  shows  itself  chiefly  in  his  realization  of  mental 
conditions  foreign  to  his  own,  and  his  style,  though  still  rich  in  color 
and  warm  with  feeling,  is  mastered,  trained,  and  directed  by  his 
intellectual  purpose.  In  the  first  epoch  he  is  the  painter,  in  the 
second  the  preacher,  in  the  third  the  teacher. 

Judgments  will  differ:  in  mine  the  last  epoch  is  the  best,  and  its 
utterances  will  long  live  a  classic  in  pulpit  literature.  The  pictures 
of  the  first  epoch  are  already  fading;  the  fervid  oratory  of  the  sec- 
ond epoch  depends  so  much  on  the  personality  of  the  preacher,  that 
as  the  one  grows  dim  in  the  distance  the  other  must  grow  dim  also; 
but  the  third,  more  enduring  though  less  fascinating,  will  remain  so 
long  as  the  heart  of  man  hungers  for  the  truth  and  the  life  of 
God, —  that  is.  for  a  rational  religion,  a  philosophy  of  life  which  shall 
combine  reverence  and  love,  and  a  reverence  and  love  which  shall 
not  call  for  the  abdication  of  the  reason. 


,y20  HENRY  WARD   BEECHER 


BOOK-STORES  AND  BOOKS 
From  <Star  Papers  > 


NOTHING  marks  the  increasing  wealth  of  our  times,  and  the 
growth  of  the  public  mind  toward  refinement,  more  than 
the  demand  for  books.  Within  ten  years  the  sale  of  com- 
mon books  has  increased  probably  two  hundred  per  cent.,  and  it 
is  daily  increasing.  But  the  sale  of  expensive  works,  and  of 
library  editions  of  standard  authors  in  costly  bindings,  is  yet 
more  noticeable.  Ten  years  ago  such  a  display  of  magnificent 
works  as  is  to  be  found  at  the  Appletons'  would  have  been  a 
precursor  of  bankruptcy.  There  was  no  demand  for  them.  A 
few  dozen,  in  one  little  show-case,  was  the  prudent  whole. 
Now,  one  w^hole  side  of  an  immense  store  is  not  only  filled  with 
admirably  bound  library  books,  but  from  some  inexhaustible 
source  the  void  continually  made  in  the  shelves  is  at  once  re- 
filled. A  reserve  of  heroic  books  supply  the  places  of  those  that 
fall.  Alas !  where  is  human  nature  so  weak  as  in  a  book-store ! 
Speak  of  the  appetite  for  drink;  or  of  a  bon  vtvanfs  relish 
for  a  dinner!  What  are  these  mere  aniinal  throes  and  ragings 
compared  with  those  fantasies  of  taste,  those  yearnings  of 
the  imagination,  those  insatiable  appetites  of  intellect,  which 
bewilder  a  student  in  a  great  bookseller's  temptation-hall  ? 

Kow  easily  one  may  distinguish  a  genuine  lover  of  books 
from  a  worldly  man!  With  what  subdued  and  yet  glowing  en- 
thusiasm does  he  gaze  upon  the  costly  front  of  a  thousand  embat- 
tled volumes!  How  gently  he  draws  them  down,  as  if  they  were 
little  children;  how  tenderly  he  handles  them!  He  peers  at  the 
title-page,  at  the  text,  or  the  notes,  with  the  nicety  of  a  bird 
examijiing  a  flower.  He  studies  the  binding:  the  leather, —  rus- 
sia,  English  calf,  morocco;  the  lettermg,  the  gilding,  the  edging, 
the  hinge  of  the  cover!  He  opens  it  and  shuts  it,  he  holds  it  off 
and  brings  it  nigh.  It  suifuses  his  whole  body  with  book  magnet- 
ism. He  walks  up  and  down  in  a  maze  at  the  mysterious  allot- 
ments of  Providence,  that  gives  so  much  money  to  men  who 
spend  it  upon  their  appetites,  and  so  little  to  men  who  would 
spend  it  in  benevolence  or  upon  their  refined  tastes!  It  is  aston- 
ishing, too,  how  one's  necessities  multiply  in  the  presence  of  the 
supply.  One  never  knows  how  many  things  it  is  impossible  to 
do  without   till   he  goes  to  Windle's  or  Smith's  house -furnishing 


HENRY  WARD   BEECHER  I-2i 

Stores.  One  is  surprised  to  perceive,  at  some  bazaar  or  fancy 
and  variety  store,  how  many  conveniences  he  needs.  He  is  satis- 
fied that  his  life  must  have  been  utterly  inconvenient  aforetime. 
And  thus  too  one  is  inwardly  convicted,  at  Appletons',  of  hav- 
ing lived  for  years  without  books  which  he  is  now  satisfied  that 
one  cannot  live  without! 

Then,  too,  the  subtle  process  by  which  the  man  convinces 
himself  that  he  can  afford  to  buy.  No  subtle  manager  or  broker 
ever  saw  through  a  maze  of  financial  embarrassments  half  so 
quick  as  a  poor  book-buyer  sees  his  way  clear  to  pay  for  what 
he  must  have.  He  promises  himself  marvels  of  retrenchment; 
he  will  eat  less,  or  less  costly  viands,  that  he  may  buy  more 
food  for  the  mind.  He  will  take  an  extra  patch,  and  go  on 
with  his  raiment  another  year,  and  buy  books  instead  of  coats. 
Yea,  he  will  write  books,  that  he  may  buy  books!  The  appe- 
tite is  insatiable.  Feeding  does  not  satisfy  it.  It  rages  by  the 
fuel  which  is  put  upon  it.  As  a  hungry  man  eats  first  and 
pays  afterward,  so  the  book-buyer  purchases  and  then  works  at 
the  debt  afterward.  This  paying  is  rather  medicinal.  It  cures  for 
a  time.  But  a  relapse  takes  place.  The  same  longing,  the  same 
promises  of  self-denial.  He  promises  himself  to  put  spurs  on 
both  heels  of  his  industry;  and  then,  besides  all  this,  he  will 
somehow  get  along  when  the  time  for  payment  comes!  Ah!  this 
SOMEHOW !  That  word  is  as  big  as  a  whole  world,  and  is  stuffed 
with  all  the  vagaries  and  fantasies  that  Fancy  ever  bred  upon 
Hope.  And  yet,  is  there  not  some  comfort  in  buying  books,  to 
be  paid  for  ?  We  have  heard  of  a  sot  who  wished  his  neck  as 
long  as  the  worm  of  a  still,  that  he  might  so  much  the  longer 
enjoy  the  flavor  of  the  draught  3  Thus,  it  is  a  prolonged  excite- 
ment of  purchase,  if  you  feel  for  six  months  in  a  slight  doubt 
whether  the  book  is  honestly  your  own  or  not.  Had  you  paid 
down,  that  would  have  been  the  end  of  it.  There  would  have 
been  no  affectionate  and  beseeching  look  of  your  books  at  you, 
every  time  you  saw  them,  saying,  as  plain  as  a  book's  eyes  can 
say,   "  Do  not  let  me  be  taken  from  you.  ^^ 

Moreover,  buying  books  before  you  can  pay  for  them  pro- 
motes caution.  You  do  not  feel  quite  at  liberty  to  take  them 
home.  You  are  married.  Your  wife  keeps  an  account-book. 
She  knows  to  a  penny  what  you  can  and  what  you  cannot 
afford.  She  has  no  "  speculation  ^^  in  her  eyes.  Plain  figures 
make   desperate   work   with   airy  ^^  somehcwsJ*     It  is   a  matter   of 


1^22  HENRY  WARD   BEECHER 

no  small  skill  and  experience  to  get  your  books  home,  and 
into  their  proper  places,  tmdiscovered.  Perhaps  the  blimdering 
express  brings  them  to  the  door  just  at  evening.  **What  is  it, 
my  dear?'^  she  says  to  you.  "Oh!  nothing — a  few  books  that 
I  cannot  do  without. ^^  That  smile!  A  true  housewife  that  loves 
her  husband  can  smile  a  whole  arithmetic  at  him  at  one  look! 
Of  course  she  insists,  in  the  kindest  way,  in  sympathizing  with 
you  in  your  literary  acquisition.  She  cuts  the  strings  of  the 
bundle  (and  of  your  heart),  and  out  comes  the  whole  story. 
You  have  bought  a  complete  set  of  costly  English  books,  full 
bound  in  calf,  extra  gilt!  You  are  caught,  and  feel  very  much 
as  if  bound  in  calf  yourself,  and  admirably  lettered. 

Now,  this  must  not  happen  frequently.  The  books  must  be 
smuggled  home.  Let  them  be  sent  to  some  near  place.  Then, 
when  your  wife  has  a  headache,  or  is  out  making  a  call,  or  has 
lain  down,  run  the  books  across  the  frontier  and  threshold, 
hastily  undo  them,  stop  only  for  one  loving  glance  as  you  put 
them  away  in  the  closet,  or  behind  other  books  on  the  shelf,  or 
on  the  topmost  shelf.  Clear  away  the  twine  and  wrapping-paper, 
and  every  suspicious  circumstance.  Be  very  careful  not  to  be  too 
kind.  That  often  brings  on  detection.  Only  the  other  day  we 
heard  it  said,  somewhere,  "Why,  how  good  you  have  been  lately. 
I  am  really  afraid  that  you  have  been  carrying  on  mischief 
secretly.^*  Our  heart  smote  us.  It  was  a  fact.  That  very  day 
we  had  bought  a  few  books  which  "we  could  not  do  without.** 
After  a  while  you  can  bring  out  one  volume,  accidentally,  and 
leave  it  on  the  table.  "Why,  my  dear,  what  a  beautiful  book! 
Where  did  you  borrow  it  ?  '*  You  glance  over  the  newspaper, 
with  the  quietest  tone  you  can  command :  "  That !  oh !  that  is 
mine.  Have  you  not  seen  it  before  ?  It  has  been  in  the  house 
these  two  months;**  and  you  rush  on  with  anecdote  and  incident, 
and  point  out  the  binding,  and  that  peculiar  trick  of  gilding,  and 
everything  else  you  can  think  of;  but  it  all  will  not  do;  you 
cannot  rub  out  that  roguish,  arithmetical  smile.  People  may  talk 
about  the  eqiiality  of  the  sexes!  They  are  not  equal.  The  silent 
smile  of  a  sensible,  loving  woman  will  vanquish  ten  men.  Of 
course  you  repent,  and  in  time  form  a  habit  of  repenting. 

Another  method  which  will  be  found  peculiarly  effective  is  to 
make  a  present  of  some  fine  work  to  your  wife.  Of  course, 
whether  she  or  you  have  the  name  of  buying  it,  it  will  go  into 
your  collection,  and  be  yours  to  all  intents  and  purposes.     But  it 


HENRY   WARD   BEECHER  1^23 

stops  remark  in  the  presentation.  A  wife  could  not  reprove  you 
for  so  kindly  thinking  of  her.  No  matter  what  she  suspects,  she 
will  say  nothing.  And  then  if  .there  are  three  or  four  more 
works  which  have  come  home  with  the  gift-book  —  they  will  pass 
through  the  favor  of  the  other. 

These  are  pleasures  denied  to  wealth  and  old  bachelors.  In- 
deed, one  cannot  imagine  the  peculiar  pleasure  of  buying  books 
if  one  is  rich  and  stupid.  There  must  be  some  pleasure,  or  so 
many  would  not  do  it.  But  the  full  flavor,  the  whole  relish  of 
delight  only  comes  to  those  who  are  so  poor  that  they  must 
engineer  for  every  book.  They  sit  down  before  them,  and 
besiege  them.  They  are  captured.  Each  book  has  a  secret  his- 
tory of  ways  and  means.  It  reminds  you  of  subtle  devices  by 
which  you  insured  and  made  it  yours,  in  spite  of  poverty! 

Copyrighted  by  Fords,  Howard  and  Hulbert,  New  York. 


SELECTED  PARAGRAPHS 

From  <  Selections  from  the  Pubhshed  Works  of  Henry  Ward   Beecher,>  com- 
piled by  Eleanor  Kirk 

AN  INTELLIGENT  conscicnce  is  one  of  the  greatest  of  luxuries. 
It  can  hardly  be  called  a  necessity,  or  how  would  the 
world  have  got  along  as  well  as  it  has  to  this  day?  —  Ser- 
mon :   ^  Conscience.  ^ 

A  man  undertakes  to  jump  across  a  chasm  that  is  ten  feet 
wide,  and  jumps  eight  feet;  and  a  kind  sympathizer  says,  "What 
is  going  to  be  done  with  the  eight  feet  that  he  did  jump  ?  ** 
Well,  what  is  going  to  be  done  with  it  ?  It  is  one  of  those 
things  which  must  be  accomplished  in  whole,  or  it  is  not  accoxn- 
plished  at  all.  —  Sermon  :  *  The  True  Value  of  Morality.  ^ 

It  is  hard  for  a  strong-willed  man  to  bow  down  to  a  weak- 
willed  man.  It  is  hard  for  an  elephant  to  say  his  prayers  to  an 
ant.  —  Sermon:  *The  Reward  of  Loving.' 

When  Peter  heard  the  cock  crow,  it  was  not  the  tail-feathers 
that  crew.  The  crowing  came  from  the  inside  of  the  cock. 
Religion  is  something  more  than  the  outward  observances  of  the 
church. — Sermon:   ^The  Battle  of  Benevolence.' 

I  have  heard  men,  in  family  prayer,  confess  their  wickedness, 
and  pray   that   God   would    forgive   them   the   sins  that  they  got 


1-24  HENRY    WARD    BEECHER 

from  Adam ;  but  I  do  not  know  that  I  ever  heard  a  father  in 
family  prayer  confess  that  he  had  a  bad  temper.  I  never  heard 
a  mother  confess  in  family  prayer  that  she  was  irritable  and 
snappish.  I  never  heard  persons  bewail  those  sins  which  are  the 
engineers  and  artificers  of  the  moral  condition  of  the  family. 
The  angels  would  not  know  what  to  do  with  a  prayer  that 
began,  "  Lord,  thon  knowest  that  I  am  a  scold.  ••*  — ■  Sermon  : 
*  Peaceableness.  ^ 

Getting  up  early  is  venerable.  Since  there  has  been  a  litera- 
ture or  a  history,  the  habit  of  early  rising  has  been  recom- 
mended for  health,  for  pleasure,  and  for  business.  The  ancients 
are  held  vip  to  us  for  examples.  But  they  lived  so  far  to  the 
east,  and  so  near  the  sun,  that  it  was  much  easier  for  them  than 
for  us.  People  in  Europe  always  get  up  several  hours  before 
we  do;  people  in  Asia  several  hours  before  Europeans  do;  and 
we  suppose,  as  men  go  toward  the  sun,  it  gets  easier  and  easier, 
until,  somewhere  in  the  Orient,  probably  they  step  out  of  bed 
involuntarily,  or,  like  a  flower  blossoming,  they  find  their  bed- 
clothes gently  opening  and  turning  back,  by  the  mere  attraction 
of  light. —  ^  Eyes  and  Ears.  ^ 

There  are  some  men  who  never  wake  up  enough  to  swear  a 
good  oath.  The  man  who  sees  the  point  of  a  joke  the  day  after 
it  is  uttered, — because  he  never  is  known  to  act  hastily,  is  he  to 
take  credit  for  that? — Sermon:   ^Conscience.* 

If  you  will  only  make  your  ideal  mean  enough,  you  can 
every  one  of  you  feel  that  you  are  heroic. —  Sermon:  ^  The  Use 
of  Ideals.* 

There  is  nothing  more  common  than  for  men  to  hang  one 
motive  outside  where  it  can  be  seen,  and  keep  the  others  in  the 
background  to  turn  the  machinery. —  Sermon:  ^  Paul  and  Deme- 
trius. •* 

Suppose  I  should  go  to  God  and  say,  "  Lord,  be  pleased  to 
give  me  salad,**  he  would  point  to  the  garden  and  say,  "There 
is  the  place  to  get  salad;  and  if  you  are  too  lazy  to  work  for 
it,  you  may  go  without.**  —  Lecture-room  Talks:  ^Answers  to 
Prayer.  * 

God  did  not  call  you  to  be  canary-birds  in  a  little  cage,  and 
to  hop  up  and  down  on  three  sticks,  within  a  space  no  larger 
than  the  size  of  the  cage.  God  calls  you  to  be  eagles,  and  to 
fly  from  sun  to  sun,  over  continents. —  Sermon:  ^The  Perfect 
Manhood.  * 


HENRY  WARD  BEECHER  1^215 

Do  not  be  a  spy  on  yourself.  A  man  who  goes  down  the 
street  thinking  of  himself  all  the  time,  with  critical  analysis, 
whether  he  is  doing  this,  that,  or  any  other  thing, —  turning  him- 
self over  as  if  he  were  a  goose  on  a  spit  before  a  fire,  and 
basting  himself  with  good  resolutions, —  is  simply  belittling  him- 
self.— ^Lectures  on  Preaching.* 

Many  persons  boil  themselves  down  to  a  kind  of  molasses 
goodness.  How  many  there  are  that,  like  flies  caught  in  some 
sweet  liquid,  have  got  out  at  last  upon  the  side  of  the  cup,  and 
crawl  along  slowly,  buzzing  a  little  to  clear  their  wings!  Just 
such  Christians  I  have  seen,  creeping  up  the  side  of  churches, 
soul-poor,  imperfect,  and  drabbled. — ^  All-Sidedness  in  Christian 
Life.* 

No  man,  then,  need  hunt  among  hair-shirts;  no  man  need 
seek  for  blankets  too  short  at  the  bottom  and  too  short  at  the 
top;  no  man  need  resort  to  iron  seats  or  cushionless  chairs;  no 
man  need  shut  himself  up  in  grim  cells;  no  man  need  stand  on 
the  tops  of  towers  or  columns, —  in  order  to  deny  himself. — 
Sermon  :   ^  Problem  of  Joy  and  Suffering  in  Life.  * 

Cop}rrighted  by  Fords,  Howard  and  Hulbert,  New  York,  1887. 


SERMON 

POVERTY  AND   THE   GOSPEL 

Texts:   Luke  iv.  17-21,  Matt.  xi.  2-6 

HERE  was  Christ's  profession  of  his  faith;  here  is  the  history 
also  of  his  examination,  to  see  whether  he  were  fit  to 
preach  or  not.  It  is  remarkable  that  in  both  these  in- 
stances the  most  significant  indication  that  he  had,  both  of  his 
descent  from  God  and  of  his  being  worthy  of  the  Messiahship, 
consisted  in  this  simple  exposition  of  the  line  of  his  preaching, — 
that  he  took  sides  with  the  poor,  neglected,  and  lost.  He  empha- 
sized this,  that  his  gospel  was  a  gospel  of  mercy  to  the  poor; 
and  that  word  ^*  poor,  **  in  its  most  comprehensive  sense,  looked 
at  historically,  includes  in  it  everything  that  belongs  to  human 
misery,  whether  it  be  by  reason  of  sin  or  depravity,  or  by  op- 
pression, or  by  any  other  cause.  This,  then,  is  the  disclosure 
by  Christ  himself  of  the  genius  of  Christianity.  It  is  his  decla- 
ration of  what  the  gospel  meant. 


1726 


HENRY   WARD   BEECHER 


It  is  Still  further  interpreted  when  you  follow  the  life  of 
Christ,  and  see  how  exactly  in  his  conduct  he  interpreted,  or 
rather  fortified,  the  words  of  the  declaration.  His  earliest  life 
was  that  of  labor  and  poverty,  and  it  was  labor  and  poverty  in 
the  poorest  districts  of  Palestine.  The  dignified,  educated,  and 
aristocratic  part  of  the  nation  dwelt  in  Judea,  and  the  Athens  of 
Palestine  was  Jerusalem.  There  Christ  spent  the  least  part  of 
his  life,  and  that  in  perpetual  discussions.  But  in  Galilee  the 
most  of  his  miracles,  certainly  the  earlier,  were  performed,  and 
the  most  of  his  discourses  that  are  contained  bodily  in  the  gos- 
pels were  uttered.  He  himself  carried  out  the  declaration  that 
the  gospel  was  for  the  poor.  The  very  miracles  that  Christ  per- 
formed were  not  philosophical  enigmas,  as  we  look  at  them. 
They  were  all  of  them  miracles  of  mercy.  They  were  miracles 
to  those  who  were  suffering  helplessly  where  natural  law  and 
artificial  means  could  not  reach  them.  In  every  case  the  mira- 
cles of  Christ  were  mercies,  though  we  look  at  them  in  a  spirit 
totally  different  from  that  in  which  he  performed  them. 

In  doing  thus,  Christ  represented  the  best  spirit  of  the  Old 
Testament.  The  Jewish  Scriptures  teach  mercy,  the  very  genius 
of  Jewish  institutions  was  that  of  mercy,  and  especially  to  the 
poor,  the  weak,  the  helpless.  The  crimes  against  which  the 
prophets  thundered  their  severest  denunciations  were  crimes 
upon  the  helpless.  It  was  the  avarice  of  the  rich,  it  was  the 
unbounded  lust  and  cruelty  of  the  strong,  that  were  denounced 
by  them.  They  did  not  preach  against  human  nature  in  gen- 
eral. They  did  not  preach  against  total  depravity  and  the  ori- 
ginal condition  of  mankind.  They  singled  out  violations  of  the 
law  in  the  magistrate,  in  the  king,  in  rich  men,  everywhere, 
and  especially  all  those  wrongs  committed  by  power  cither 
unconsciously  or  with  purpose,  cruelty  upon  the  helpless,  the 
defenseless,  the  poor  and  the  needy.  When  Christ  declared  that 
this  was  his  ministry,  he  took  his  text  from  the  Old  Testament;  he 
spoke  in  its  vSpirit.  It  was  to  preach  the  gospel  to  the  poor  that 
he  was  sent.  He  had  come  into  the  world  to  change  the  condition 
of  mankind.  Beginning  at  the  top.?  No;  beginning  at  the  bottom 
and  working  up  to  the  top  from  the  bottom. 

When  this  view  of  the  gospel  enters  into  our  understanding 
and  is  fully  comprehended  by  us,  how  exactly  it  fits  in  with  the 
order  of  nature,  and  v/ith  the  order  of  the  unfolding  of  human 
life  and  human  society!     It  take  sides  with  the  poor;  and  so  the 


HENRY  WARD   BEECHER  1^27 

universal  tendency  of  Providence  and  of  history,  slowly  un- 
folded, is  on  the  whole  going-  from  low  to  high,  from  worse  to 
better,  and  from  good  toward  the  perfect.  When  we  consider, 
we  see  that  man  begins  as  a  helpless  thing,  a  baby  zero  without 
a  figure  before  it;  and  every  step  in  life  adds  a  figure  to  it 
and  gives  it  more  and  more  worth.  On  the  whole,  the  law  of 
unfolding  throughout  the  world  is  from  lower  to  higher;  and 
though  when  applied  to  the  population  of  the  globe  it  is  almost 
inconceivable,  still,  with  many  back-sets  and  reactions,  the  tend- 
ency of  the  universe  is  thus  from  lower  to  higher.  Why  ?  Let 
any  man  consider  whether  there  is  not  of  necessity  a  benevo- 
lent intelligence  somewhere  that  is  drawing  up  from  the  crude 
toward  the  ripe,  from  the  rough  toward  the  smooth,  from  bad  to 
good,  and  from  good  through  better  toward  best.  The  tendency 
upward  runs  like  a  golden  thread  through  the  history  of  the 
whole  world,  both  in  the  unfolding  of  human  life  and  in  the 
unfolding  of  the  race  itself.  Thus  the  tendency  of  nature  is  in 
accordance  with  the  tendency  of  the  gospel  as  declared  by  Jesus 
Christ,  namely,   that  it  is  a  ministry  of  mercy  to  the  needy. 

The  vast  majority  of  mankind  have  been  and  yet  are  poor. 
There  are  ten  thousand  men  poor  where  there  is  one  man  even 
comfortably  provided  for,  body  and  soul,  and  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands where  there  is  one  rich,  taking  the  whole  world  together. 
The  causes  of  poverty  are  worthy  a  moment's  consideration.  Cli- 
mate and  soil  have  much  to  do  with  it.  Men  whose  winter  lasts 
nine  or  ten  months  in  the  year,  and  who  have  a  summer  of  but 
one  or  two  months,  as  in  the  extreme  north, — how  could  they 
amass  property,  how  could  they  enlarge  their  conditions  of  peace 
and  of  comfort  ?  There  are  many  parts  of  the  earth  where  men 
live  on  the  borders  of  deserts,  or  in  mountain  fastnesses,  or  in 
arctic  rigors,  where  anything  but  poverty  is  impossible,  and 
where  it  requires  the  whole  thought,  genius,  industry,  and  fore- 
sight of  men,  the  year  round,  just  to  feed  themselves  and  to 
live.  Bad  government,  where  men  are  insecure  in  their  prop- 
erty, has  always  been  a  very  fertile  source  of  poverty.  The 
great  valley  of  Esdraelon  in  Northern  Palestine  is  one  of  the 
most  fertile  in  the  world,  and  yet  famine  perpetually  stalks  on 
the  heels  of  the  population;  for  if  you  sow  and  the  harvest 
waves,  forth  come  hordes  of  Bedouins  to  reap  your  harvest  for 
you,  and  leave  you,  after  all  your  labor,  to  poverty  and  starva- 
tion.    When  a  man  has  lost  his  harvest  in  that  way  two  or  three 


1728 


HENRY  WARD  BEECHER 


times,  and  is  deprived  of  the  reward  of  his  labors,  he  never 
emerges  from  poverty,  but  sinks  into  indolence;  and  that,  by  and 
by,  breeds  apathetic  misery.  So  where  the  government  over- 
taxes its  subjects,  as  is  the  case  in  the  Orient  with  perhaps 
nearly  all  of  the  populations  there  to-day,  it  cuts  the  sinews  and 
destroys  all  the  motives  of  industry;  and  without  industry  there 
can  be  neither  virtue,  morality,  nor  religion  in  any  long  period. 
Wars  breaking  out,  from  whatever  cause,  tend  to  absorb  prop- 
erty, or  to  destroy  property,  or  to  prevent  the  development  of 
property.  Yet,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  the  men  who  suffer 
from  war  are  those  whose  passions  generally  lead  it  on.  The 
king  may  apply  the  spark,  but  the  combustion  is  with  the  com- 
mon people.  They  furnish  the  army,  they  themselves  become 
destroyers;  and  the  ravages  of  war,  in  the  history  of  the  human 
family,  have  destroyed  more  property  than  it  is  possible  to  enter 
into  the  thoughts  of  men  to  conceive. 

But  besides  these  external  reasons  of  poverty,  there  are  cer- 
tain great  primary  and  fundamental  reasons.  Ignorance  breeds 
poverty.  What  is  property  ?  It  is  the  product  of  intelligence,  of 
skill,  of  thought  applied  to  material  substances.  All  property  is 
raw  material  that  has  been  shaped  to  uses  by  intelligent  skill. 
Where  intelligence  is  low,  the  power  of  producing  property  is 
low.  It  is  the  husbandman  who  thinks,  foresees,  plans,  and  calls 
on  all  natural  laws  to  serve  him,  whose  farm  brings  forth  forty, 
fifty,  and  a  hundred  fold.  The  ignorant  peasant  grubs  and 
groans,  and  reaps  but  one  handful  where  he  has  sown  two.  It 
is  knowledge  that  is  the  gold  mine;  for  although  every  knowing 
man  may  not  be  able  to  be  a  rich  man,  yet  out  of  ignorance 
riches  do  not  spring  anywhere.  Ignorant  men  may  be  made  the 
factors  of  wealth  when  they  are  guided  and  governed  by  supe- 
rior intelligence.  Slave  labor  produced  gigantic  plantations  and 
estates.  The  slave  was  always  poor,  but  his  master  was  rich, 
because  the  master  had  the  intelligence  and  the  knowledge,  and 
the  slave  gave  the  work.  All  through  human  society,  men  who 
represent  simple  ignorance  will  be  tools,  and  the  men  who  repre- 
sent intelligence  will  be  the  master  mechanics,  the  capitalists. 
All  society  to-day  is  agitated  with  this  question  of  justice  as 
between  the  laborer  and  the  thinker.  Now,  it  is  no  use  to  kick 
against  the  pricks.  A  man  who  can  only  work  and  not  think  is 
not  the  equal  in  any  regard  of  the  man  who  can  think,  who  can 
plan,  who  can  combine,  and  who  can  live   not  for  to-day  alone. 


HENRY   WARD   BEECHER  1 729 

but  for  to-morrow,  for  next  month,  for  the  next  year,  for  ten 
years.  This  is  the  man  whose  volume  will  just  as  surely  weigh 
down  that  of  the  unthinking  man  as  a  ton  will  weigh  down  a 
pound  in  the  scale.  Avoirdupois  is  moral,  industrial,  as  well  as 
material,  in  this  respect;  and  the  primary,  most  usual  cause  of 
unprosperity  in  industrial  callings  therefore  lies  in  the  want 
of  intelligence, —  either  in  the  slender  endowment  of  the  man,  or 
more  likely  the  want  of  education  in  his  ordinary  and  average 
endowment.  Any  class  of  men  who  live  for  to-day,  and  do  not 
care  whether  they  know  anything  more  than  they  did  yesterday 
or  last  year  —  those  men  may  have  a  temporary  and  transient 
prosperity,  but  they  are  the  children  of  poverty  just  as  surely  as 
the  decrees  of  God  stand.  Ignorance  enslaves  men  among  men; 
knowledge  is  the  creator  of  liberty  and  wealth. 

As  with  undeveloped  intelligence,  so  the  appetites  of  men  and 
their  passions  are  causes  of  povert)^  Men  who  live  from  the 
basilar  faculties  will  invariably  live  in  inferior  stations.  The 
men  who  represent  animalism  are  as  a  general  fact  at  the 
bottom.  They  may  say  it  is  government,  climate,  soil,  want  of 
capital,  they  may  say  what  they  please,  but  it  is  the  devil  of 
laziness  that  is  in  them,  or  of  passion,  that  comes  out  in  eating, 
in  gluttony,  in  drinking  and  drunkenness,  in  wastefulness  on 
every  side.  I  do  not  say  that  the  laboring  classes  in  modern 
society  are  poor  because  they  are  self-indulgent,  but  I  say  that 
it  unquestionably  would  be  wise  for  all  men  who  feel  irritated 
that  they  are  so  unprosperous,  if  they  would  take  heed  to  the 
moral  condition  in  which  they  are  living,  to  self-denial  in  their 
passions  and  appetites,  and  to  increasing  the  amount  of  their 
knowledge  and  fidelity.  Although  moral  conditions  are  not  the 
sole  causes,  they  are  principal  causes,  of  the  poverty  of  the 
working  classes  throughout  the  world.  It  is  their  misfortune  as 
well  as  their  fault;  but  it  is  the  reason  why  they  do  not  rise. 
Weakness  does  not  rise;    strength  does. 

All  these  causes  indicate  that  the  poor  need  moral  and  intel- 
lectual ciilture.  "I  was  sent  to  preach  the  gospel  to  the  poor:** 
not  to  distribute  provisions,  not  to  relieve  their  wants;  that  will 
be  included,  but  that  was  not  Christ's  primary  idea.  It  was  not 
to  bring  in  a  golden  period  of  fruitfulness  when  men  would  not 
be  required  to  work.  It  was  not  that  men  should  lie  down 
on  their  backs  under  the  trees,  and  that  the  boughs  should 
bend  over  and  drop  the  ripe  fruit  into  their  mouths.  No  such 
in — lOQ 


1^30  HENRY  WARD  BEECHER 

conception  of  equality  and  abundance  entered  into  the  mind  of 
the  Creator  or  of  Him  who  represented  the  Creator.  To  preach 
the  gospel  to  the  poor  was  to  awaken  the  mind  of  the  poor.  It 
was  to  teach  the  poor — *^Take  up  your  cross,  deny  yourselves, 
and  follow  me.  Restrain  all  those  sinful  appetites  and  passions, 
and  hold  them  back  by  the  power  of  knowledge  and  by  the 
power  of  conscience;  grow,  because  you  are  the  sons  of  God, 
into  the  likeness  of  your  Father."  So  he  preached  to  the  poor. 
That  was  preaching  prosperity  to  them.  That  was  teaching 
them  how  to  develop  their  outward  condition  by  developing  their 
inward  forces.  To  develop  that  in  men  which  should  make  them 
wiser,  purer,  and  stronger,  is  the  aim  of  the  gospel.  Men  have 
supposed  that  the  whole  end  of  the  gospel  was  reconciliation 
between  God  and  men  who  had  fallen  —  though  they  were  born 
sinners  in  their  fathers  and  grandfathers  and  ancestors;  to  recon- 
cile them  with  God  —  as  if  an  abstract  disagreement  had  been 
the  cause  of  all  this  world's  trouble!  But  the  plain  facts  of 
history  are  simply  that  men,  if  they  have  not  come  from  ani- 
mals, have  yet  dwelt  in  animalism,  and  that  that  which  should 
raise  them  out  of  it  was  some  such  moral  influence  as  should 
give  them  the  power  of  ascension  into  intelligence,  into  virtue, 
and  into  true  godliness.  That  is  what  the  gospel  was  sent  for; 
good  news,  a  new  power  that  is  kindled  under  men,  that  will 
lift  them  from  their  low  ignorances  and  degradations  and  pas- 
sions, and  lift  them  into  a  higher  realm;  a  power  that  will  take 
away  all  the  poverty  that  needs  to  be  taken  away.  Men  may  be 
doctrinally  depraved;  they  are  much  more  depraved  practically. 
Men  may  need  to  be  brought  into  the  knowledge  of  God  specu- 
latively; but  what  they  do  need  is  to  be  brought  into  the 
knowledge  of  themselves  practically.  I  do  not  say  that  the 
gospel  has  nothing  in  it  of  this  kind  of  spiritual  knowledge;  it 
is  full  of  it,  but  its  aim  and  the  reason  why  it  should  be 
preached  is  to  wake  up  in  men  the  capacity  for  good  things, 
industries,  frugalities,  purities,  moralities,  kindnesses  one  toward 
another:  and  when  men  are  brought  into  that  state  they  are 
reconciled.  When  men  are  reconciled  with  the  law  of  creation 
and  the  law  of  their  being,  they  are  reconciled  with  God. 
Whenever  a  man  is  reconciled  with  the  law  of  knowledge,  he 
is  reconciled  with  the  God  of  knowledge,  so  far.  Whenever  a 
man  is  reconciled  with  the  law  of  purity  he  is  so  far  reconciled 
with    a   God   of    purity.      When    men    have    lifted    themselves    to 


HENRY   WARD  BEECHER 


1731 


that  point  that  they  recognize  that  they  are  the  children  of  God, 
the  kingdom  of  God  has  begun  within  them. 

Although  the  spirit  and  practice  of  the  gospel  will  develop 
charities,  will  develop  physical  comfort,  will  feed  men,  will  heal 
men,  will  provide  for  their  physical  needs,  yet  the  primary  and 
fundamental  result  of  the  gospel  is  to  develop  man  him.self,  not 
merely  to  relieve  his  want  on  an  occasion.  It  does  that  as  a 
matter  of  course,  but  that  is  scarcely  the  first  letter  of  the 
alphabet.  ^*  Seek  ye  first  the  kingdom  of  God  and  his  righteous- 
ness, and  all  these  things  [food  and  raiment]  shall  be  added 
unto  you.'^  The  way  to  relieve  a  man  is  to  develop  him  so  that 
he  will  need  no  relief,  or  to  raise  higher  and  higher  the  charac- 
ter of  the  help  that  he  demands. 

In  testing  Christianity,  then,  I  remark  first  that  it  is  to  be 
tested  not  by  creeds,  but  by  conduct.  The  evidence  of  the 
gospel,  the  reality  of  the  gospel  that  is  preached  in  schools  or 
churches,  is  to  be  found  in  the  spirit  that  is  developed  by  it,  not 
in  the  technical  creeds  that  men  have  constructed  out  of  it. 
The  biography  of  men  who  have  died  might  be  hung  up  in  their 
sepulchres;  but  you  could  not  tell  what  kind  of  a  man  this  one 
had  been,  just  by  reading  his  life  there  —  while  he  lay  dead  in 
dust  before  you.  There  are  thousands  of  churches  that  have  a 
creed  of  Christianity  hung  up  in  them,  but  the  church  itself  is  a 
sepulchre  full  of  dead  men's  bones;  and  indeed,  many  churches 
in  modem  times  are  gnawing  the  bones  of  their  ancestors,  and 
doing  almost  nothing  else. 

The  gospel,  changed  from  a  spirit  of  humanity  into  a  philo- 
sophical system  of  doctrine,  is  perverted.  It  is  not  the  gospel. 
The  great  heresy  in  the  world  of  religion  is  a  cold  heart,  not  a 
luminous  head.  It  is  not  that  intelligence  is  of  no  use  in  reli- 
gion. By  no  means.  Neither  would  we  wage  a  crusade  against 
philosophical  systems  of  moral  truth.  But  where  the  active  sym- 
pathy and  humanity  of  loving  hearts  for  living  inen,  and  for  men 
in  the  ratio  in  which  they  are  low,  is  laid  aside  or  diminished  to 
a  minimum,  and  in  its  place  is  a  well-elaborated  philosophical 
system  of  moral  truths,  hewn  and  jointed, — the  gospel  is  gone. 
If  you  go  along  the  sea-shores,  you  will  often  find  the  shells  of 
fish  —  the  fish  dead  and  gone,  the  shells  left.  And  if  you  go 
along  the  shores  of  ecclesiastical  organization,  you  will  find  mul- 
titudes of  shells  of  the  gospel,  out  of  which  the  living  sub- 
stance has  gone  long  ago.      Organized  Christianity — that  is,  the 


1^22  HENRY   WARD   BEECHER 

institutions  of  Christianity  have  been  in  the  first  instance  its 
power,  and  in  the  second  instance  its  damnation.  The  moment 
you  substitute  the  machinery  of  education  for  education  itself, 
the  moment  you  build  schools  and  do  not  educate,  build  colleges 
that  do  not  increase  knowledge  in  the  pupils,  you  have  sacrificed 
the  aim  for  the  instrument  by  which  you  were  to  gain  that  aim. 
In  churches,  the  moment  it  is  more  important  to  maintain  build- 
ings,, rituals,  ministers,  chanters,  and  all  the  paraphernalia  of 
moral  education  than  the  spirit  of  personal  sympathy,  the  moment 
these  are  more  sacred  to  men  than  is  the  welfare  of  the  popula- 
tion round  about  which  they  were  set  to  take  care  of,  that  very 
moment  Christ  is  dead  in  that  place;  that  very  moment  religion 
in  the  midst  of  all  its  institutions  has  perished.  I  am  bound  to 
say  that  in  the  history  of  the  world,  while  religious  institutions 
have  been  valuable  and  have  done  a  great  deal  of  good,  they 
have  perhaps  done  as  much  harm  as  good.  There  is  scarcely 
one  single  perversion  of  civil  government,  there  is  scarcely  one 
single  persecution  of  men,  there  is  scarcely  a  single  one  of  the 
great  wars  that  have  depopulated  the  globe,  there  is  scarcely  one 
great  heresy  developed  out  of  the  tyranny  of  the  church,  that 
has  not  been  the  fruit  of  institutional  religion;  while  that  spirit 
of  humanity  which  was  to  give  the  institution  its  motive  power 
has  to  a  certain  extent  died  out  of  it. 

Secondly,  churches  organized  upon  elective  affinities  of  men 
are  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  the  gospel.  We  may  associate  with 
men  who  are  of  like  taste  with  ours.  We  have  that  privilege. 
If  men  are  knowledgeable  and  intellectual,  there  is  no  sin  in 
their  choosing  for  intimate  companions  and  associates  men  of  like 
pursiiits  and  like  intellectual  qualities.  That  is  right.  If  men 
are  rich,  there  is  no  reason  why  men  who  hold  like  property 
should  not  confer  with  each  other,  and  form  interests  and  friend- 
ships together.  If  men  are  refined,  if  they  have  become  aesthetic, 
there  is  no  reason  why  they  should  not  associate  in  the  realm  of 
beauty,  artists  with  artists,  nor  why  the  great  enjoyers  of  beauty 
should  not  be  in  sympathy.  But  all  these  are  not  to  be  allowed 
to  do  it  at  the  price  of  abandoning  common  humanity;  you  have 
no  right  to  make  your  nest  in  the  boughs  of  knowledge,  and  let 
all  the  rest  of  the  world  go  as  it  will.  You  have  no  right  to 
make  your  home  among  those  who  are  polished  and  exquisite 
and  fastidious  in  their  tastes,  whose  garments  are  beauty,  whose 
house  is  a  temple  of  art,  and  all  whose  associations  are  of  like 


HENRY   WARD   BEECHER  .  jy^^ 

kind,  and  neglect  common  humanity.  You  have  no  right  to 
shut  yourself  up  in  a  limited  company  of  those  who  are  like  you 
in  these  directions,  and  let  all  the  rest  of  men  go  without 
sympathy  and  without  care.  It  is  a  right  thing  for  a  man  to 
salute  his  neighbor  who  salutes  him ;  but  if  you  salute  those  who 
salute  you,  says  Christ,  what  thank  have  ye  —  do  not  even  the 
publicans  so  ?  It  is  no  sin  that  a  man,  being  intellectual  in  his 
nature,  should  like  intellectual  people,  and  gratify  that  which  is 
divine  and  God-like  in  him;  but  if,  because  he  likes  intellectual 
people,  he  loses  all  interest  in  ignorant  people,  it  convicts  him  of 
depravity  and  of  inoral  perversion.  When  this  is  carried  out  to 
such  an  extent  that  churches  are  organized  upon  sharp  classifica- 
tion, upon  elective  affinities,  they  not  only  cease  to  be  Christian 
churches,  but  they  are  heretical;  not  perhaps  in  doctrine,  but 
worse  than  that,  heretical  in  heart.     .     .     . 

The  fact  is  that  a  church  needs  poor  men  and  wicked  men 
as  much  as  it  does  pure  men  and  virtuous  men  and  pious  men. 
What  man  needs  is  familiarity  with  universal  human  nature. 
He  needs  never  to  separate  himself  from  men  in  daily  life.  It 
is  not  necessary  that  in  our  houses  we  should  bring  pestilential 
diseases  or  pestilential  exainples,  but  somehow  we  must  hold  on 
to  men  if  they  are  wicked;  somehow  the  circulation  between  the 
top  and  the  bottom  must  be  carried  on;  somehow  there  must  be 
an  atoning  power  in  the  heart  of  every  true  believer  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  who  shall  say,  looking  out  and  seeing  that  the 
world  is  lost,  and  is  living  in  sin  and  misery,  "  I  belong  to  it, 
and  it  belongs  to  me.'^  When  you  take  the  loaf  of  society  and 
cut  ofE  the  upper  crust,  slicing  it  horizontally,  you  get  an  elect 
church.  Yes,  it  is  the  peculiarly  elect  church  of  selfishness. 
But  you  should  cut  the  loaf  of  society  from  the  top  down  to 
the  bottom,  and  take  in  something  of  everything.  True,  every 
church  would  be  very  inuch  edified  and  advantaged  if  it  had  in 
it  scholarly  men,  knowledgeable  men;  but  the  church  is  strong 
in  proportion  as  it  has  in  it  som.ething  of  everything,  from  the 
very  top  to  the  very  bottom. 

Now,  I  do  not  disown  creeds  —  provided  they  are  my  own! 
Well,  you  smile;  but  that  is  the  way  it  has  been  since  the  world 
began.  No  denomination  believes  in  any  creed  except  its  own. 
I  do  not  say  that  men's  knowledge  on  moi^al  subjects  may  not 
be  formulated.  I  criticize  the  formulation  of  beliefs  from  time 
to  time,  in  this:  that  they  are  very  partial;  that  they  are  formed 


1734  .  HENRY  WARD  BEECHER 

upon  the  knowledge  of  a  past  age,  and  that  that  knowledge  per- 
ishes while  higher  and  nobler  knowledge  comes  in;  that  there 
ought  to  be  higher  and  better  forms;  and  that  while  their  power 
is  relatively  small,  the  power  of  the  spirit  of  humanity  is  rela- 
tively great.  When  I  examine  a  church,  I  do  not  so  much  care 
whether  its  worship  is  to  the  one  God  or  to  the  triune  God.  I 
do  not  chiefly  care  for  the  catechism,  nor  for  the  confession  of 
faith,  although  they  are  both  interesting.  I  do  not  even  look  to 
see  whether  it  is  a  synagogue  or  a  Christian  church  —  I  do  not 
care  whether  it  has  a  cross  over  the  top  of  it  or  is  Quaker 
plain.  I  do  not  care  whether  it  is  Protestant,  Catholic,  or 
anything  else.  Let  me  read  the  living — the  living  book! 
What  is  the  spirit  of  the  people  ?  How  do  they  feel  among 
each  other  ?  How  do  they  feel  toward  the  community  ?  What 
is  their  life  and  conduct  in  regard  to  the  great  prime  moral 
duty  of  man,  ^^  Love  the  Lord  thy  God  and  thy  neighbor  as  thy- 
self,'^ whether  he  be  obscure  or  whether  he  be  smiling  in  the 
very  plenitude  of  wealth  and  refinement  ?  Have  you  a  heart 
for  humanity  ?  Have  you  a  soul  that  goes  out  for  men  ?  Are 
you  Christ-like  ?  Will  you  spend  yourself  for  the  sake  of  ele- 
vating men  who  need  to  be  lifted  up  ?  That  is  orthodox.  I  do 
not  care  what  the  creed  is.  If  a  church  has  a  good  creed,  that 
is  all  the  more  felicitous;  and  if  it  has  a  bad  creed,  a  good  life 
cures  the  bad  creed. 

One  of  the  dangers  of  our  civilization  may  be  seen  in  the 
light  of  these  considerations.  We  are  developing  so  much 
strength  founded  on  popular  intelligence,  and  this  intelligence 
and  the  incitements  to  it  are  developing  such  large  property 
interests,  that  if  the  principle  of  elective  affinity  shall  sort  men 
out  and  classify  them,  we  are  steering  to  the  not  very  remote 
danger  of  the  disintegration  of  human  society.  I  can  tell  you 
that  the  classes  of  men  who  by  their  knowledge,  refinement,  and 
vealth  think  they  are  justified  in  separating  themselves,  and  in 
naking  a  great  void  between  them  and  the  myriads  of  men 
below  them,  are  courting  their  own  destruction.  I  look  with 
very  great  interest  on  the  process  of  change  going  on  in  Great 
Britain,  where  the  top  of  society  had  all  the  ^*  blood,'*  but  the 
circulation  is  growing  larger  and  larger,  and  a  change  is  gradu- 
ally taking  place  in  their  institutions.  The  old  nobility  of  Great 
Britain  is  the  lordliest  of  aristocracies  existing  in  the  world. 
Happily,   on   the  whole,   a  very   noble   class   of  men    occupy  the 


HENRY    WARD   BEECHER  1^25 

high  positions:  but  the  spirit  of  suffrage,  this  angel  of  God  that 
so  many  hate,  is  coming  in  on  them;  and  when  every  man  in 
Great  Britain  can  vote,  no  matter  whether  he  is  poor  or  rich, 
whether  he  has  knowledge  or  no  knowledge,  there  must  be  a 
very  great  change.  Before  the  great  day  of  the  Lord  shall 
come,  the  valleys  are  to  go  up  and  the  mountains  are  to  come 
down;  and  the  mountains  have  started  already  in  Great  Britain 
and  must  come  down.  There  may  be  an  aristocracy  in  any 
nation, —  that  is  to  say,  there  may  be  ^^  best  men**;  there  ought 
to  be  an  aristocracy  in  every  community, —  that  is,  an  aristocracy 
of  men  who  speak  the  truth,  who  are  just,  who  are  intelligent: 
but  that  aristocracy  will  be  like  a  wave  of  the  sea;  it  has  to  be 
reconstituted  in  every  generation,  and  the  men  who  are  the  best 
in  the  State  become  the'  aristocracy  of  that  State.  But  where 
rank  is  hereditary,  if  political  suffrage  becomes  free  and  uni- 
versal, aristocracy  cannot  live.  The  spirit  of  the  gospel  is  demo- 
cratic. The  tendency  of  the  gospel  is  leveling;  leveling  up,  not 
down.  It  is  carrying  the  poor  and  the  multitude  onward  and 
upward. 

It  is  said  that  democracies  have  no  great  men,  no  heroic 
men.  Why  is  it  so  ?  When  you  raise  the  average  of  intelli- 
gence and  power  in  the  community  it  is  very  hard  to  be  a  great 
man.  That  is  to  say,  when  the  great  mass  of  citizens  are  only 
ankle-high,  when  among  the  Lilliputians  a  Brobdingnagian  walks, 
he  is  a  great  man.  But  when  the  Lilliputians  grow  until  they 
get  up  to  his  shoulder,  he  is  not  so  great  a  man  as  he  was  by 
the  whole  length  of  his  body.  So,  make  the  common  people 
grow,  and  there   is  nobody  tall  enough  to  be  much  higher. 

The  remarkable  people  of  this  world  are  useful  in  their  way; 
but  the  common  people,  after  all,  represent  the  nation,  the  age, 
and  the  civilization.  Go  into  any  town  or  city:  do  not  ask  who 
lives  in  that  splendid  house;  do  not  say.  This  is  a  fine  town, 
here  are  streets  of  houses  with  gardens  and  yards,  and  every- 
thing that  is  beautiful  the  whole  way  through.  Go  into  the 
lanes,  go  into  the  back  streets,  go  where  the  mechanic  lives;  go 
where  the  day-laborer  lives.  See  what  is  the  condition  of  the 
streets  there.  See  what  they  do  with  the  poor,  with  the  helpless 
and  the  mean.  If  the  top  of  society  bends  perpetually  over  the 
bottom  with  tenderness,  if  the  rich  and  strong  are  the  best 
friends  of  the  poor  and  needy,   that  is  a  civilized  and  a  Christian 


1736 


HENRY   WARD   BEECHER 


comniiinity ;  but  if  the  rich  and  the  wise  are  the  cream  and  the 
great  bulk  of  the  population  skim-milk,  that  is  not  a  prosperous 
community. 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  irreligion  in  men,  there  is  a  great 
deal  of  wickedness  and  depravity  in  men,  but  there  are  times 
when  it  is  true  that  the  church  is  more  dissipated  than  the 
dissipated  classes  of  the  community.  If  there  is  one  thing  that 
stood  out  more  strongly  than  any  other  in  the  ministry  of  our 
Lord,  it  is  the  severity  with  which  he  treated  the  exclusiveness 
of  men  with  knowledge,  position,  and  a  certain  sort  of  religion, 
a  religion  of  particularity  and  carefulness;  if  there  is  one  class 
of  the  community  against  which  he  hurled  his  thunderbolts  with- 
out mercy  and  predicted  woes,  it  was  the  scribes,  Pharisees, 
scholars,  and  priests  of  the  temples.  He  told  them  in  so  many 
words,  ^^  The  publican  and  the  harlot  will  enter  the  kingdom  of 
God  before  you.^^  The  worst  dissipation  in  this  world  is  the 
dry-rot  of  morality,  and  of  the  so-called  piety  that  separates  men 
of  prosperity  and  of  power  from  the  poor  and  ignoble.  They 
are  our  wards. 

I  am  not  a  socialist.  I  do  not  preach  riot.  I  do  not  preach 
the  destruction  of  property.  I  regard  property  as  one  of  the 
sacred  things.  The  real  property  established  by  a  man's  own 
intelligence  and  labor  is  the  crystallized  man  himself.  It  is  the 
fruit  of  what  his  life-work  has  done;  and  not  in  vain,  society 
makes  crime  against  it  amongst  the  most  punishable.  But  never- 
theless, I  warn  these  men  in  a  country  like  ours,  where  every 
man  votes,  whether  he  came  frcmi  Hungary,  or  from  Russia,  or 
from  Germany,  or  from  France  or  Italy,  or  Spain  or  Portugal, 
or  from  the  Orient, — from  Japan  and  China,  because  they  too 
are  going  to  vote !  On  the  Niagara  River,  logs  come  floating 
down  and  strike  an  island,  and  there  they  lodge  and  accumulate 
for  a  little  while,  and  won't  go  over.  But  the  rains  come,  the 
snows  melt,  the  river  rises,  and  the  logs  are  lifted  up  and  down, 
and  they  go  swinging  over  the  falls.  The  stream  of  suffrage  of 
free  men,  having  all  the  privileges  of  the  State,  is  this  great 
stream.  The  figure  is  defective  in  this,  that  the  log  goes  over 
the  Niagara  Falls,  but  that  is  not  the  way  the  country  is  going 
or  will  go.  .  .  .  There  is  a  certain  river  of  political  life,  and 
everything  has  to  go  into  it  first  or  last;  and  if,  in  days  to 
come,  a  man  separates  himself  from  his  fellows  without  sympa- 
thy, if  his  wealth  and  power  make  poverty  feel  itself  more  poor 


HENRY   WARD   BEECHER  ly^y 

and  men's  misery  more  miserable,  and  set  against  him  the  whole 
stream  of  popular  feeling-,  that  man  is  in  danger.  He  may  not 
know  who  dynamites  him,  but  there  is  danger;  and  let  him  take 
heed  who  is  in  peril.  There  is  nothing  easier  in  the  world  than 
for  rich  men  to  ingratiate  themselves  with  the  whole  community 
in  which  they  live,  and  so  secure  themselves.  It  is  not  selfish- 
ness that  will  do  it;  it  is  not  by  increasing  the  load  of  misfor- 
tune, it  is  not  by  wasting  substance  in  riotous  living  upon 
appetites  and  passions.  It  is  by  recognizing  that  every  man  is  a 
brother.  It  is  by  recognizing  the  essential  spirit  of  the  gospel, 
*^  Love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself.  ^*  It  is  by  using  some  of  their 
vast  power  and  riches  so  as  to  diffuse  joy  in  every  section  of 
the  community. 

Here  then  I  close  this  discourse.  How  much  it  enrolls!  How 
very  simple  it  is!  It  is  the  whole  gospel.  When  you  make  an 
application  of  it  to  all  the  phases  of  organization  and  classifica- 
tion of  human  interests  and  developments,  it  seems  as  though 
it  were  as  big  as  the  universe.  Yet  when  you  condense  it,  it  all 
comes  back  to  the  one  simple  creed :  ^^  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord 
thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,  and  thy  neighbor  as  thyself.'^  Who 
is  my  neighbor  ?  A  certain  man  went  down  to  Jericho,  and  so 
on.  That  tells  you  who  your  neighbor  is.  Whosoever  has  been 
attacked  by  robbers,  has  been  beaten,  has  been  thrown  down  — 
by  liquor,  by  gambling,  or  by  any  form  of  wickedness;  whoso- 
ever has  been  cast  into  distress,  and  you  are  called  on  to  raise 
him  up  —  that  is  your  neighbor.  Love  your  neighbor  as  your- 
self.    That  is  the  gospel. 

Reprinted  by  permission  of  Fords,  Howard  &  Hulbert;  New  York. 


A  NEW   ENGLAND   SUNDAY 
From   <  Norwood  > 

IT  IS  worth  all  the  inconveniences  arising  from  the  occasional 
over-action  of  New  England  Sabbath  observance,  to  obtain 
the  full  flavor  of  a  New  England  Sunday.  But  for  this,  one 
should  have  been  born  there;  should  have  found  Sunday  already 
waiting  for  him,  and  accepted  it  with  implicit  and  absolute  con- 
viction, as  if  it  were  a  law  of  nature,  in  the  same  way  that 
night  and  day,  summer  and  winter,  are  parts  of  nature.  He 
should  have  been  brought  up  by  parents  who  had  done  the  same 


1738 


HENRY   WARD   BEECHER 


thing,  as  tJtcy  were  by  parents  even  more  strict,  if  that  were 
possible;  until  not  religious  persons  peculiarly,  but  everybody  — 
not  churches  alone,  but  society  itself,  and  all  its  population,  those 
who  broke  it  as  much  as  those  who  kept  it  —  were  stained 
through  with  the  color  of  Sunday.  Nay,  until  Nature  had  adopted 
it,  and  laid  its  commands  on  all  birds  and  beasts,  on  the  sun  and 
winds,  and  upon  the  whole  atmosphere;  so  that  without  much 
imagination  one  might  imagine,  in  a  genuine  New  England 
Sunday  of  the  Connecticut  River  Valley  stamp,  that  God  was 
still  on  that  day  resting  from  all  the  work  which  he  had  created 
and  made,   and  that  all  his  work  rested  with  him! 

Over  all  the  town  rested  the  Lord's  peace !  The  saw  was  rip- 
ping away  yesterday  in  the  carpenter's  shop,  and  the  hammer 
was  noisy  enough.  To-day  there  is  not  a  sign  of  life  there.  The 
anvil  makes  no  music  to-day.  Tommy  Taft's  buckets  and  bar- 
rels give  forth  no  hollow,  thumping  sound.  The  mill  is  silent  — 
only  the  brook  continues  noisy.  Listen !  In  yonder  pine  woods 
what  a  cawing  of  crows!  Like  an  echo,  in  a  wood  still  more 
remote  other  crows  are  answering.  But  even  a  crow's  throat 
to-day  is  musical.  Do  they  think,  because  they  have  black  coats 
on,  that  they  are  parsons,  and  have  a  right  to  play  pulpit  with 
all  the  pine-trees  ?  Nay.  The  birds  will  not  have  any  such 
monopoly, —  they  are  all  singing,  and  singing  all  together,  and 
no  one  cares  whether  his  song  rushes  across  another's  or  not. 
Larks  and  robins,  blackbirds  and  orioles,  sparrows  and  bluebirds, 
mocking  cat-birds  and  wrens,  were  furrowing  the  air  with  such 
mixtures  as  no  other  day  but  Sunday,  when  all  artificial  and 
human  sounds  cease,  could  ever  hear.  Every  now  and  then  a 
bobolink  seemed  impressed  with  the  duty  of  bringing  these 
jangling  birds  into  more  regularity;  and  like  a  country  singing- 
master,  he  flew  down  the  ranks,  singing  all  the  parts  himself  in 
snatches,  as  if  to  stimiilate  and  help  the  laggards.  In  vain! 
Sunday  is  the  birds'  day,  and  they  will  have  their  own  demo- 
cratic worship. 

There  was  no  sound  in  the  village  street.  Look  either  way  — 
not  a  vehicle,  not  a  human  being.  The  smoke  rose  up  soberly 
and  quietly,  as  if  it  said  —  It  is  Sunday!  The  leaves  on  the 
great  elms  hung  motionless,  glittering  in  dew,  as  if  they  too, 
like  the  people  who  dwelt  imder  their  shadow,  were  waiting  for 
the  bell  to  ring  for  meeting.  Bees  sung  and  flew  as  usual;  but 
honey-bees  have  a  Sunday  way  with  them  all  the  week,  and 
could  scarcely  change  for  the  better  on  the  seventh  day. 


HENRY   WARD   BEECHER 


J739 


But  oh,  the  Sun!  It  had  sent  before  and  cleared  every  stain 
out  of  the  sky.  The  blue  heaven  was  not  dim  and  low,  as  on 
secular  days,  but  curved  and  deep,  as  if  on  Sunday  it  shook  off 
all  incumbrance  which  during  the  week  had  lowered  and  flat- 
tened it,  and  sprang  back  to  the  arch  and  symmetry  of  a  dome. 
All  ordinary  sounds  caught  the  spirit  of  the  day.  The  shut- 
ting of  a  door  sounded  twice  as  far  as  usual.  The  rattle  of  a 
bucket  in  a  neighbor's  yard,  no  longer  mixed  with  heterogeneous 
noises,  seemed  a  new  sound.  The  hens  went  silently  about,  and 
roosters  crowed  in  psalm-tunes.  And  when  the  first  bell  rung, 
Nature  seemed  overjoyed  to  find  something  that  it  might  do 
without  breaking  Sunday,  and  rolled  the  sound  over  and  over, 
and  pushed  it  through  the  air,  and  raced  with  it  over  field  and 
hill,  twice  as  far  as  on  week-days.  There  were  no  less  than 
seven  steeples  in  sight  from  the  belfry,  and  the  sexton  said:  — 
"  On  still  Sundays  I've  heard  the  bell,  at  one  time  and  another, 
when  the  day  was  fair,  and  the  air  moving  in  the  right  way, 
from  every  one  of  them  steeples,  and  I  guess  likely  they've  all 
heard  our'n.  ^^ 

"Come,  Rose!'^  said  Agate  Bissell,  at  an  even  earlier  hour 
than  when  Rose  usually  awakened  — "  Come,  Rose,  it  is  the  Sab- 
bath. We  must  not  be  late  Sunday  morning,  of  all  days  in  the 
week.     It  is  the  Lord's  day.^^ 

There  was  little  preparation  required  for  the  day.  Saturday 
night,  in  some  parts  of  New  England,  was  considered  almost  as 
sacred  as  Sunday  itself.  After  sundown  on  Saturday  night  no 
play,  and  no  work  except  such  as  is  immediately  preparatory  to 
the  Sabbath,  were  deemed  becoming  in  good  Christians.  The 
clothes  had  been  laid  out  the  night  before.  Nothing  was  for- 
gotten. The  best  frock  was  ready;  the  hose  and  shoes  were 
waiting.  Every  article  of  linen,  every  ruffle  and  ribbon,  were 
selected  on  Saturday  night.  Every  one  in  the  house  walked 
mildly.  Every  one  spoke  in  a  low  tone.  Yet  all  were  cheerful. 
The  mother  had  on  her  kindest  face,  and  nobody  laughed,  but 
everybody  made  it  up  in  smiling.  The  nurse  smiled,  and  the 
children  held  on  to  keep  down  a  giggle  within  the  lawful  bounds 
of  a  smile;  and  the  doctor  looked  rounder  and  calmer  than  ever; 
and  the  dog  flapped  his  tail  on  the  floor  with  a  softened  sound, 
as  if  he  had  fresh  wrapped  it  in  hair  for  that  very  day.  Aunt 
Toodie,  the  cook  (so  the  children  had  changed  Mrs.  Sarah 
Good's  name),  was  blacker  than  ever  and  shinier  than  ever,  and 


I740  HENRY   WARD  BEECHER 

the  coffee  better,  and  the  cream  richer,  and  the  broiled  chickens 
juicier  and  more  tender,  and  the  biscuit  whiter,  and  the  corn- 
bread  more  brittle  and  sweet. 

When  the  good  doctor  read  the  Scriptures  at  family  prayer, 
the  infection  of  silence  had  subdued  everything-  except  the  clock. 
Out  of  the  wide  hall  could  be  heard  in  the  stillness  the  old 
clock,  that  now  lifted  up  its  voice  with  unwonted  emphasis,  as  if, 
unnoticed  through  the  bustling  week,  Sunday  was  its  vantage 
ground,  to  proclaim  to  mortals  the  swift  flight  of  time.  And  if 
the  old  pedant  performed  the  task  with  something  of  an  ostenta- 
tious precision,  it  was  because  in  that  house  nothing  else  put  02 
official  airs,  and  the  clock  felt  the  responsibility  of  doing  it  for 
the  whole  mansion. 

And  ncnv  came  mother  and  catechism;  for  Mrs.  Wentworth 
followed  the  old  custom,  and  declared  that  no  child  of  hers  should 
grow  up  without  catechism.  Secretly,  the  doctor  was  quite  will- 
ing, though  openly  he  played  off  upon  the  practice  a  world  of 
good-natured  discouragement,  and  declared  that  there  should  be 
an  opposition  set  up  —  a  catechism  of  Nature,  with  natural  laws 
for  decrees,  and  seasons  for  Providence,  and  flowers  for  graces! 
The  younger  children  were  taught  in  simple  catechism.  But 
Rose,  having  reached  the  mature  age  of  twelve,  was  now  mani- 
festing her  power  over  the  Westminster  Shorter  Catechism;  and 
as  it  was  simply  an  achievement  of  memory  and  not  of  the 
understanding,  she  had  the  book  at  great  advantage,  and  soon 
subdued  every  question  and  answer  in  it.  As  much  as  possible, 
the  doctor  was  kept  aloof  on  such  occasions.  His  grave  questions 
were  not  to  edification,  and  often  they  caused  Rose  to  stumble, 
and  brought  down  sorely  the  exultation  with  which  she  rolled 
forth,  "  They  that  are  effectually  called  do  in  this  life  partake 
of  justification,  adoption,  sanctification,  and  the  several  benefits 
which  in  this  life  do  either  accompany  or  flow  from  them.*^ 

"  What  do  those  words  mean.  Rose  ?  * 

*<  Which  words,  pa  ?  '* 

"Adoption,  sanctification,  and  justification?** 

Rose  hesitated,  and  looked  at  her  mother  for  rescue. 

"  Doctor,  why  do  you  trouble  the  child  ?  Of  course  she  don't 
know  yet  all  the  meaning.  But  that  will  come  to  her  when  she 
grows  older.'* 

"  You  make  a  nest  of  her  memory,  then,  and  put  words  there, 
like  eggs,  for  future  hatching  ? " 


HENRY   WARD   BEECHER 


1741 


<*Yes,  that  is  it  exactly:  birds  do  not  hatch  their  eggs  the 
minute  they  lay  them.     They  wait.'* 

"  Laying  eggs  at  twelve  to  be  hatched  at  twenty  is  subjecting 
them  to  some  risk,  is  it  not  ?  '* 

"  It  might  be  so  with  eggs,  but  not  with  the  catechism.  That 
will  keep  without  spoiling  a  hundred  years !  ** 

"  Because  it  is  so  dry  ?  " 

**  Because  it  is  so  good.  But  do,  dear  husband,  go  away,  and 
not  put  notions  in  the  children's  heads.  It's  hard  enough  already 
to  get  them  through  their  tasks.  Here's  poor  Arthur,  who  has 
been  two  Sundays  on  one  question,  and  has  not  got  it  yet.'* 

Arthur,  aforesaid,  was  sharp  and  bright  in  anything  addressed 
to  his  reason,  but  he  had  no  verbal  memory,  and  he  was  there- 
fore wading  painfully  through  the  catechism  like  a  man  in  a 
deep-muddy  road;  with  this  difference,  that  the  man  carries  too 
much  clay  with  him,  while  nothing  stuck  to  poor  Arthur. 


The  beauty  of  the  day,  the  genial  season  of  the  year,  brought 
forth  every  one;  old  men  and  their  feebler  old  wives,  young  and 
hearty  men  and  their  plump  and  ruddy  companions, —  young  men 
and  girls  and  children,  thick  as  punctuation  points  in  Hebrew 
text,  filled  the  street.  In  a  low  voice,  they  spoke  to  each  other 
in  single  sentences. 

*^A  fine  day!     There'll  be  a  good  congregation  out  to-day.* 

**Yes;  we  may  expect  a  house  full.  How  is  Widow  Cheney — 
have  you  heard  ?  ** 

"Well,  not  much  better;  can't  hold  out  many  days.  It  will 
be  a  great  loss  to  the  children.** 

"Yes;  but  we  must  all  die  —  nobody  can  skip  his  turn.  Does 
she  still  talk  about  them  that's  gone  ?  ** 

"They  say  not.  I  believe  she's  sunk  into  a  quiet  way;  and 
it  looks  as  if  she'd  go  off  easy.** 

"Sunday  is  a  good  day  for  dying — it's  about  the  only  jour- 
ney that  speeds  well  on  this  day !  ** 

There  was  something  striking  in  the  outflow  of  people  into 
the  street,  that  till  now  had  seemed  utterly  deserted.  There  was 
no  fevered  hurry;  no  negligent  or  poorly  dressed  people.  Every 
family  came  in  groups  —  old  folks  and  young  children;  and  every 
member  blossomed  forth  in  his  best  apparel,  like  a  rose-bush  in 
June.     Do  you  know  that  man  in  a  silk  hat  and  new  black  coat  ? 


,-^^2  HENRY   WARD   BEECHER 

Probably  it  is  some  stranger.  No;  it  is  the  carpenter,  Mr, 
Baggs,  who  was  racing  about  yesterday  with  his  sleeves  rolled 
up,  and  a  dust-and-business  look  in  his  face !  I  knew  you  would 
not  know  him.  Adams  Gardner,  the  blacksmith, —  does  he  not 
look  every  inch  a  judge,  now  that  he  is  clean-washed,  shaved, 
and  dressed  ?  His  eyes  are  as  bright  as  the  sparks  that  fly  from 
his  anvil! 

Are  not  the  folks  proud  of  their  children  ?  See  what  groups 
of  them!  How  ruddy  and  plump  are  most!  Some  are  roguish, 
and  cut  clandestine  capers  at  every  chance.  Others  seem  like 
wax  figures,  so  perfectly  proper  are  they.  Little  hands  go  slyly 
through  the  pickets  to  pluck  a  tempting  flower.  Other  hands 
carry  hymn-books  or  Bibles.  But,  carry  what  they  may,  dressed 
as  each  parent  can  afford,  is  there  anything  the  sun  shines  upon 
more  beautiful  than  these  troops  of  Sunday  children  ? 

The  old  bell  had  it  all  its  own  way  up  in  the  steeple.  It 
was  the  licensed  noise  of  the  day.  In  a  long  shed  behind  the 
church  stood  a  score  and  half-score  of  wagons  and  chaises  and 
carryalls, —  the  horses  already  beginning  the  forenoon's  work  of 
stamping  and  whisking  the  flies.  More  were  coming.  Hiram 
Beers  had  *^  hitched  iip,**  and  brought  two  loads  with  his  new 
hack;  and  now,  having  secured  the  team,  he  stood  with  a  few 
admiring  young  fellows  about  him,  remarking  on  the  people  as 
they  came  up. 

"There's  Trowbridge — he'll  git  asleep  afore  the  first  prayer's 
over.  I  don't  b'lieve  he's  heerd  a  sermon  in  ten  years.  I've 
seen  him  sleep  standin'  up  in  singin'. 

*^  Here  comes  Deacon  Marble, —  smart  old  feller,  ain't  he?  — 
wouldn't  think  it,  jest  to  look  at  him !  Face  looks  like  an  ear  of 
last  summer's  sweet  corn,  all  dried  up;  but  I  tell  ye  he's  got  the 
juice  in  him  yit !  Aunt  Polly's  gittin'  old,  ain't  she  ?  They  say 
she  can't  walk  half  the  time — lost  the  use  of  her  limbs;  but  it's 
all  gone  to  her  tongtie.  That's  as  good  as  a  razor,  and  a  sight 
better  'n  mine,  for  it  never  needs  sharpenin'. 

"Stand  away,  boys,  there's  'Biah  Cathcart,  Good  horses  —  not 
fast,  but  mighty  strong,  just  like  the  owner.** 

And  with  that  Hiram  touched  his  new  Sunday  hat  to  Mrs. 
Cathcart  and  Alice;  and  as  he  took  the  horses  by  the  bits,  he 
dropped  his  head  and  gave  the  Cathcart  boys  a  look  of  such 
awful  solemnity,  all  except  one  eye,  that  they  lost  their  sobriety. 
Barton  alone  remained  sober  as  a  judge. 


HENRY   WARD   BEECHER  1^42 

^*  Here  comes  *  Dot-and-Go-One  *  and  his  wife.  They're  my 
kind  o'  Christians.      She  is  a  saint,  at  any  rate." 

"  How  is  it  with  you,  Tommy  Taft  ?  ^* 

<<  Fair  to  middlin',  thank'e.  Such  weather  would  make  a  hand- 
spike blossom,  Hiram.** 

"  Don't  you  think  that's  a  leetle  strong,  Tommy,  for  Sunday  ? 
P'raps  you  mean  afore  it's  cut  ?  ** 

"  Sartin ;  that's  what  I  mean.  But  you  mustn't  stop  me, 
Hiram.  Parson  Buell  '11  be  lookin'  for  me.  He  never  begins 
till  I  git  there.** 

"  You  mean  you  always  git  there  'fore  he  begins.  ** 

Next,  Hiram's  prying  eyes  saw  Mr.  Turfmould.  the  sexton 
and  undertaker,  who  seemed  to  be  in  a  pensive  meditation  upon 
all  the  dead  that  he  had  ever  buried.  He  looked  upon  men  in 
a  mild  and  pitying  manner,  as  if  he  forgave  them  for  being  in 
good  health.  You  could  not  help  feeling  that  he  gazed  upon 
you  with  a  professional  eye,  and  saw  just  how  you  would  look 
in  the  condition  which  was  to  him  the  most  interesting  period 
of  a  man's  earthly  state.  He  walked  with  a  soft  tread,  as  if  he 
was  always  at  a  funeral;  and  when  he  shook  your  hand,  his  left 
hand  half  followed  his  right,  as  if  he  were  about  beginning  to 
lay  you  out.  He  was  one  of  the  few  men  absorbed  by  his  busi- 
ness, and  who  unconsciousl}^  measured  all  things  from  its  stand- 
point. 

*^  Good-morning,  Mr.  Turfmould !  How's  your  health  ?  How 
is  business  with  you  ?  ** 

"Good  —  the   Lord  be  praised!     I've   no  reason  to   complain.** 

And  he  glided  silently  and  smoothly  into  the  church. 

"  There  comes  Judge  Bacon,  white  and  ugly,  **  said  the  critical 
Hiram.  "I  wonder  what  he  comes  to  meetin'  for.  Lord  knows 
he  needs  it,  sly,  slippery  old  sinner!  Face's  as  white  as  a  lily; 
his  heart's  as  black  as  a  chimney  flue  afore  it's  cleaned.  He'll 
get  his  flue  burned  out  if  he  don't  repent,  that's  certain.  He 
don't  believe  the  Bible.  They  say  he  don't  believe  in  God. 
Wal,  I  guess  it's  pretty  even  between  'em.  Shouldn't  wonder  if 
God  didn't  believe  in  him  neither.**     . 

As  soon  as  the  afternoon  service  was  over,  every  horse  on 
the  green  knew  that  it  was  time  for  him  to  go  home.  Some 
grew  restless  and  whinnied  for  their  masters.  Nimble  hands 
soon  put  them  into  the  shafts  or  repaired  any  irregularity  of 
harness.     Then  came  such  a  scramble  of  vehicles  to  the  church 


1744  HENRY   WARD   BEECHER 

door  for  the  older  persons;  while  young  women  and  children, 
venturing  further  out  upon  the  green,  were  taken  up  hastily, 
that  the  impatient  horses  might  as  soon  as  possible  turn  their 
heads  homeward.  Clouds  of  dust  began  to  arise  along  every 
outward-going  road.  In  less  than  ten  minutes  not  a  wagon  or 
chaise  was  seen  upon  the  village  green.  They  were  whirling 
homeward  at  the  very  best  pace  that  the  horses  could  raise. 
Stiff  old  steeds  vainly  essayed  a  nimbler  gait,  but  gave  it  up 
in  a  few  rods,  and  fell  back  to  the  steady  jog.  Young  horses, 
tired  of  long  standing,  and  with  a  strong  yearning  for  evening 
oats,  shot  along  the  level  ground,  rushed  up  the  little  hills,  or 
down  upon  the  other  side,  in  the  most  un- Sunday-like  haste. 
The  scene  was  not  altogether  unlike  the  return  from  a  military 
funeral,  to  which  men  march  with  sad  music  and  slow,  but  from 
which  they  return  nimbly  marching  to  the  most  brilliant  q-uick- 
step. 

In  half  an  hour  Norwood  was  quiet  again.  The  dinner,  on 
Sunday,  when  for  the  sake  of  the  outlying  population  the  two 
services  are  brought  near  together  in  the  middle  of  the  day,  was 
usually  deferred  till  the  ordinary  supper  hour.  It  was  evident 
that  the  tone  6f  the  day  was  changed.  Children  were  not  so 
strictly  held  in.  There  was  no  loud  talking,  nor  was  laughing 
allowed,  but  a  general  feeling  sprung  up  around  the  table  that 
the  severer  tasks  of  the  day  were  ended. 

Devout  and  age-sobered  people  sat  in  a  kind  of  golden  twi- 
light of  meditation.  The  minister,  in  his  well-ordered  house, 
tired  with  a  double  service,  mingled  thoughts  both  glad  and  sad. 
His  tasks  were  ended.  He  was  conscious  that  he  had  manfully 
done  his  best.  But  that  best  doing,  as  he  reflected  upon  it, 
seemed  so  poor,  so  unworthy  of  the  nobleness  of  the  theme,  and 
so  relatively  powerless  upon  the  stubborn  stuff  of  which  his  peo- 
ple's dispositions  were  made,  that  there  remained  a  vague,  unquiet 
sense  of  blame  upon  his  conscience. 

It  was  Dr.  Wentworth's  habit  to  walk  with  his  family  in  the 
garden,  early  in  the  morning  and  late  in  the  afternoon.  If  early, 
Rose  was  usually  his  company;  in  the  afternoon  the  whole  family, 
Agate  Bissell  always  excepted.  She  had  in  full  measure  that 
peculiar  New  England  feeling  that  vSunday  is  to  be  kept  by  stay- 
ing in  the  house,  except  such  time  as  is  spent  at  church.  And 
though  she  never,  impliedly  even,  rebuked  the  doctor's  resort  to 
his  garden,  it  was  plain  that  deep  down  in  her  heart  she  thought 


HENRY   WARD   BEECHER 


1745 


it  an  improper  way  of  spending  Sunday;  and  in  that  view  she 
had  the  secret  sympathy  of  almost  all  the  noteworthy  villagers. 
Had  any  one,  upon  that  day,  made  Agate  a  visit,  unless  for 
some  plain  end  of  necessity  or  mercy,  she  would  have  deemed  it 
a  personal  affront. 

Sunday  was  the  Lord's  day.  Agate  acted  as  if  any  use  of  it 
for  her  own  pleasure  would  be  literal  and  downright  stealing. 

"We  have  six  days  for  our  own  work.  We  ought  not  to 
begrudge  the  Lord  one  whole  day.** 

Two  circumstances  distressed  honest  Agate's  conscience.  The 
one  was  that  the  incursion  of  summer  visitors  from  the  city 
was  tending  manifestly  to  relax  the  Sabbath,  especially  after 
the  church  services.  The  other  was  that  Dr.  Wentworth  would 
occasionally  allow  Judge  Bacon  to  call  in  and  discuss  with  him 
topics  suggested  by  the  sermons.  She  once  expressed  herself  in 
this  wise:  — 

"  Either  Sunday  is  worth  keeping,  or  it  is  not.  If  you  do 
keep  it,  it  ought  to  be  strictly  done.  But  lately  Sunday  is  ravel- 
ing out  at  the  end.  We  take  it  on  like  a  summer  dress,  which 
in  the  morning  is  clean  and  sweet,  but  at  night  it  is  soiled  at 
the  bottom  and  much  rumpled  all  over.** 

Dr.  Wentworth  sat  with  Rose  on  one  side  and  her  mother  on 
the  other,  in  the  honeysuckle  corner,  where  the  west  could  be 
seen,  great  trees  lying  athwart  the  horizon  and  checkering  the 
golden  light  with  their  dark  masses.  Judge  Bacon  had  turned 
the  conversation  upon  this  very  topic. 

«  I  think  our  Sundays  in  New  England  are  Puritan  and  Jew- 
ish more  than  Christian.  They  are  days  of  restriction  rather 
than  of  joyousness.     They  are  fast  days,  not  feast  days.** 

"  Do  you  say  that  as  a  mere  matter  of  historical  criticism,  or 
do  you  think  that  they  could  be  improved  practically  ?  ** 

"  Both.  It  is  susceptible  of  proof  that  the  early  Christian 
Sunday  was  a  day  of  triumph  and  of  much  social  joy.  It  would 
be  well  if  we  could  follow  primitive  example.** 

"  Judge,  I  am  hardly  of  your  opinion.  I  should  be  unwilling 
to  see  our  New  England  Sunday  changed,  except  perhaps  by  a 
larger  social  liberty  in  each  family.  Much  might  be  done  to 
make  it  attractive  to  children,  and  relieve  older  persons  from 
ennui.  But  after  all,  we  must  judge  things  by  their  fruits.  If 
you  bring  me  good  apples,  it  is  in  vain  to  abuse  the  tree  as 
craggy,  rude,  or  homely.  The  fruit  redeems  the  tree.* 
Ill — no 


1746 


HENRY   WARD  BEECHER 


"  A  very  comely  figure,  Doctor,  but  not  very  good  reasoning. 
New  England  has  had  something  at  work  upon  her  beside  her 
Sundays.  What  you  call  the  ^  fruit  *  grew,  a  good  deal  of  it  at 
any  rate,   on  other  trees  than  Sunday  trees. '^ 

^*  You  arc  only  partly  right.  New  England  character  and 
history  are  the  result  of  a  wide-spread  system  of  influences  of 
which  the  Sabbath  day  was  the  type  —  and  not  only  so,  but  the 
grand  motive  power.  Almost  every  cause  which  has  worked 
benignly  among  us  has  received  its  inspiration  and  impulse 
largely  from  this  One  Solitary  Day  of  the  week. 

"  It  is  true  that  all  the  vegetable  growths  that  we  see  about 
us  here  depend  upon  a  great  variety  of  causes;  but  there  is  one 
cause  that  is  the  condition  of  power  in  every  other,  and  that  is 
the  Sun!  And  so,  many  as  have  been  the  influences  working  at 
New  England  character,  Sunday  has  been  a  generic  and  multi- 
plex force,  inspiring  and  directing  all  others.  It  is  indeed  the 
Sun's  day. 

**  It  is  a  little  singular  that,  borrowing  the  name  from  the 
heathen  calendar,  it  should  have  tallied  so  well  with  the  Script- 
ure name,  the  Lord's  day  —  that  Lord  who  was  the  Morning  Stal 
in  early  day,   and  at  length  the  Sun  of  Righteousness! 

"  The  Jews  called  it  the  Sabbath  —  a  day  of  rest.  Modern 
Christians  call  it  the  Sun's  day,  or  the  day  of  light,  warmth,  and 
growth.  If  this  seems  fanciful  so  far  as  the  names  of  the  day 
are  concerned,  it  is  strikingly  characteristic  of  the  real  spirit  of 
the  two  days,  in  the  ancient  and  modem  dispensation.  I  doubt  if 
the  old  Jews  ever  kept  a  Sabbath  religiously,  as  we  understand 
that  term.  Indeed,  I  suspect  there  was  not  yet  a  religious 
strength  in  that  national  character  that  could  hold  up  religious 
feeling  without  the  help  of  social  and  even  physical  adjuvants. 
Their  religious  days  were  either  fasts  or  like  our  Thanksgiving 
days.  But  the  higher  and  richer  moral  nature  which  has  been 
developed  by  Christianity  enables  communities  to  sustain  one  day 
in  seven  upon  a  high  spiritual  plane,  with  the  need  of  but  very 
little  social  help,   and  without  the  feasting  element  at  all.* 

•  **  That  may  be  very  well  for  a  few  saints  like  you  and  me, 
Doctor,  but  it  is  too  high  for  the  majority  of  men.  Common 
people  find  the  strict  Simdays  a  great  annoyance,  and  clandes- 
tinely set  them  aside." 

"  I  doubt  it.  There  are  a  few  in  every  society  that  live  by 
their  sensuous  nature.     Sunday  must  be  a  dead  day  to  them  —  a 


HENRY   WARD   BEECHER  ly^y 

dark  room.  No  wonder  they  break  through.  But  it  is  not  so 
with  the  sturdy,  unsophisticated  laboring  class  in  New  England. 
If  it  came  to  a  vote,  you  would  find  that  the  farmers  of  New 
England  would  be  the  defenders  of  the  day,  even  if  screwed  up 
to  the  old  strictness.  Their  instinct  is  right.  It  is  an  observ- 
ance that  has  always  worked  its  best  effects  upon  the  common 
people,  and  if  I  were  to  change  the  name,  I  should  call  Sunday 
The  Poor  Man's  Day. 

*^  Men  do  not  yet  perceive  that  the  base  of  the  brain  is  full  of 
despotism,  and  the  coronal  brain  is  radiant  with  liberty.  I  mean 
that  the  laws  and  relations  which  grow  out  of  men's  relations  in 
physical  things  are  the  sternest  and  hardest,  and  at  every  step 
in  the  assent  toward  reason  and  spirituality,  the  relations  grow 
more  kindly  and  free. 

*^  Now,  it  is  natural  for  men  to  prefer  an  animal  life.  By- 
and-by  they  will  learn  that  such  a  life  necessitates  force,  absolut- 
ism. It  is  natural  for  unreflecting  men  to  complain  when  custom 
or  institutions  hold  them  up  to  some  higher  degree.  But  that 
higher  degree  has  in  it  an  element  of  emancipation  from  the 
necessary  despotisms  of  physical  life.  If  it  were  possible  to 
bring  the  whole  community  up  to  a  plane  of  spirituality,  it 
would  be  found  that  there  and  there  only  could  be  the  highest 
measure  of  liberty.  And  this  is  my  answer  to  those  who  grum- 
ble at  the  restriction  of  Sunday  liberty.  It  is  only  the  liberty 
of  the  senses  that  suffers.  A  higher  and  nobler  civil  liberty, 
moral  liberty,  social  liberty,  will  work  out  of  it.  Sunday  is  the 
common  people's  Magna  Charta. " 

"Well  done.  Doctor!  I  give  up.  Hereafter  you  shall  see  me 
radiant  on  Sunday.  I  must  not  get  my  hay  in  if  storms  do 
threaten  to  spoil  it;  but  I  shall  give  my  conscience  a  hitch  up, 
and  take  it  out  in  that.  I  must  not  ride  out;  but  then  I  shall 
regard  every  virtuous  self-denial  as  a  moral  investment  with 
good  dividends  coming  in  by-and-by.  I  can't  let  the  children 
frolic  in  the  front  dooryard;  but  then,  while  they  sit  waiting 
for  the  sun  to  go  down,  and  your  Sun-day  to  be  over,  I  shall 
console  myself  that  they  are  one  notch  nearer  an  angelic  condi- 
tion every  week.  But  good-night,  good-night,  Mrs.  Wentworth, 
I  hope  you  may  not  become  so  spiritual  as  quite  to  disdain  the 
body.  I  really  think,  for  this  world,  the  body  has  some  respect- 
able uses  yet.  Good-night,  Rose.  The  angels  take  care  of  you, 
if  there  is  one  of  them  good  enough.* 


1748 


HENRY   WARD   BEECHER 


And  SO  the  Judge  left. 

They  sat  silently  looking  at  the  snn,  now  but  just  above  the 
horizon.  A  few  scarfs  of  cloud,  brilliant  with  flame-color,  and 
every  moment  changing  forms,  seemed  like  winged  spirits,  half 
revealed,  that  hovered  round  the  retiring  orb. 

Mrs.   Wentworth  at  length  broke  the  silence. 

*  I  always  thought,  Doctor,  that  you  believed  Sunday  over- 
strictly  kept,  and  that  you  were  in  favor  of  relaxation.^* 

^*  I  am.  Just  as  fast  as  you  can  make  it  a  day  of  real  reli- 
gious enjoyment,  it  will  relax  itself.  True  and  deep  spiritual 
feeling  is  the  freest  of  all  experiences.  And  it  reconciles  in 
itself  the  most  perfect  consciousness  of  liberty  with  the  most 
thorough  observance  of  outward  rules  and  proprieties.  Liberty 
is  not  an  outward  condition.  It  is  an  inward  attribute,  or  rather 
a  name  for  the  quality  of  life  produced  by  the  highest  moral 
attributes.  When  communities  come  to  that  condition,  we  shall 
see  fewer  laws  and  higher  morality. 

**  The  one  great  poem  of  New  England  is  her  Sunday ! 
Through  that  she  has  escaped  materialism.  That  has  been  a 
crystal  dome  overhead,  through  which  Imagination  has  been 
kept  alive.  New  England's  imagination  is  to  be  found,  not  in 
art  and  literature,  but  in  her  inventions,  her  social  organism, 
and  above  all  in  her  religious  life.  The  Sabbath  has  been  the 
nurse  of  that.  When  she  ceases  to  have  a  Sunday,  she  will  be 
as  this  landscape  is  —  now  growing  dark,  all  its  lines  blurred,  its 
distances  and  gradations  fast  merging  into  sheeted  darkness  and 
night.     Come,  let  us  go  in!'* 

Copyrighted  by  Fords,  Howard  and  Hulbert. 


1749 


LUDWIG   VAN    BEETHOVEN 

(1770-1827) 

BY   E.    IREN^US   STEVENSON 

SE  ARE  warned  on  high  authority  that  no  man  can  serve  two 
masters.  The  caution  should  obtain  in  aesthetics  as  well  as 
in  ethics.  As  a  general  rule,  the  painter  must  stick  tQ  his 
easel,  the  sculptor  must  carve,  the  musician  must  score  or  play  or 
sing,  the  actor  must  act,- — each  with  no  more  than  the  merest  coquet- 
tings  with  sister  arts.  Otherwise  his  genius  is  apt  to  suffer  from 
what  are  side-issues  for  temperament.  To  many  minds  a  taste,  and 
even  a  singular  capacity,  for  an  avocation  has  injured  the  work  done 
in  the  real  vocation. 

Of  course  there  are  exceptions.  The 
versatility  has  not  always  been  fatal.  We 
recall  Leonardo,  Angelo,  Rossetti,  and  Blake 
among  painters;  in  the  ranks  of  musicians 
we  note  Hoffmann,  Berlioz,  Schumann,  Wag- 
ner, Boito.  In  other  art-paths,  such  per- 
sonal pages  as  those  of  Cellini,  and  the 
critical  writings  of  Story  of  to-day,  may 
add  their  evidence.  The  essentially  auto- 
biographic in  such  a  connection  must  be 
accepted  with  reserve.  So  must  be  taken 
much  admirable  writing  as  to  the  art  in 
which  the  critic  or  teacher  has  labored. 
Didactics  are  not  necessarily  literature.  Per- 
haps the  best  basis  of  determining  the  right  to  literary  recognition 
of  men  .and  women  who  have  written  and  printed  more  or  less  with- 
out actually  professing  letters,  will  be  the  interest  of  the  matter  they 
have  left  to  the  kind  of  reader  who  does  not  care  a  pin  about  their 
real  life-work,  or  about  their  self-expression  as  it  really  comes  down 
to  us. 

In  painting,  the  dual  capacity — for  the  brush  and  for  letters  — 
has  more  shining  examples  than  in  music.  But  with  Beethoven, 
Schumann,  Boito,  and  Wagner,  comes  a  striking  succession  of  men 
who,  as  to  autobiography  or  criticism  or  verse,  present  a  high  quality 
of  interest  to  the  general  reader.  In  the  instance  of  Beethoven  the 
critical  or  essayistic  side  is  limited.  It  is  by  his  letters  and  diary 
that  we   study   (only  less  vividly  than  in  his  music)  a  character  of 


Beethoven 


j-^o  LUDWIG   VAN   BEETHOVEN 

profound  depth  and  imposing  nobility;  a  nature  of  exquisite  sensitive- 
ness. In  them  we  follow,  if  fragmentarily,  the  battle  of  personality 
against  environment,  the  secrets  of  strong  but  high  passion,  the 
artist  temperament.  —  endowed  with  a  dignity  and  a  moral  majesty 
seldom  equaled  in  an  art  indeed  called  divine,  but  with  children  who 
frequently  remind  us  that  Pan  absorbed  in  playing  his  syrinx  has  a 
goat's  hoof. 

Beethoven  in  all  his  correspondence  wrote  himself  down  as  what 
he  was, — a  superior  man,  a  mighty  soul  in  many  traits,  as  well  as 
a  supreme  creative  musician.  His  letters  are  absorbing,  whether 
they  breathe  love  or  anger,  discouragement  or  joy,  rebellion  against 
untoward  conditions  of  daily  life  or  solemn  resignation.  The  reli- 
gious quality,  too,  is  strong  in  them ;  that  element  more  in  touch 
with  Deism  than  with  one  or  another  orthodoxy.  Withal,  he  is  as 
sincere  in  every  line  of  such  matter  as  he  was  in  the  spoken  word. 
His  correspondence  holds  up  the  mirror  to  his  own  nature,  with  its 
extremes  of  impulse  and  reserve,  of  affection  and  austerity,  of  confi- 
dence and  suspicion.  It  abounds,  too,  in  that  brusque  yet  seldom 
coarse  humor  which  leaps  up  in  the  Finale  of  the  Seventh  Sym- 
phony, in  the  Eighth  Symphony's  waggery,  the  last  movement  of  the 
Concerto  in  E  flat.  They  offer  likewise  verbal  admissions  of  such 
depression  of  heart  as  we  recognize  in  the  sternest  episodes  of  the 
later  Sonatas  and  of  the  Galitzin  Quartets,  and  in  the  awful  Alle- 
gretto of  the  Symphony  in  A.  They  hint  at  the  amorous  passion 
of  the  slow  movements  of  the  Fourth  and  Ninth  Symphonies,  at  the 
moral  heroism  of  the  Fifth,  at  the  more  human  courage  of  the 
<  Heroic,*  at  the  mysticism  of  the  Ninth's  tremendous  opening.  In 
interesting  relation  to  the  group,  and  merely  of  superficial  interest, 
are  his  hasty  notes,  his  occasional  efforts  to  write  in  English  or  in 
French,  his  touches  of  musical  allusiveness. 

It  is  not  in  the  purpose  of  these  prefatory  paragraphs  to  a  too- 
brief  group  of  Beethoven's  letters  to  enter  upon  his  biography. 
That  is  essentially  a  musician's  life ;  albeit  the  life  of  a  musician 
who,  as  Mr.  Edward  Dannreuther  suggests,  leaves  behind  him  the 
domain  of  mere  art  and  enters  upon  that  of  the  seer  and  the 
prophet.  He  was  born  in  Bonn  in  1770,  on  a  day  the  date  of  which  is 
not  certain  (though  we  know  that  his  baptism  was  December  17th), 
His  youth  was  not  a  sunshiny  period.  Poverty,  neglect,  a  drunken 
father,  violin  lessons  under  compulsion,  were  the  circumstances 
ushering  him  into  his  career.  He  was  for  a  brief  time  a  pupil  of 
Mozart;  just  enough  so  to  preserve  that  succession  of  royal  geniuses 
expressed  in  linking  Mozart  to  Haydn,  and  in  remembering  that  Liszt 
played  for  Beethoven  and  that  Schubert  stood  beside  Beethoven's  last 
sick-bed.     High  patronage  and  interest  gradually  took  the  composer 


LUDWIG   VAN   BEETHOVEN  ,yei 

under  its  care.  Austria  and  Germany  recognized  him,  England 
accepted  him  early,  universal  intelligence  became  enthusiastic  over 
utterances  in  art  that  seemed  as  much  innovations  as  Wagneristic 
writing  seemed  to  the  next  generation.  In  Vienna,  Beethoven  may 
be  said  to  have  passed  his  life.  There  were  the  friends  to  whom  he 
wrote  —  who  understood  and  loved  him.  Afflicted  early  with  a  deaf- 
ness that  became  total, — the  irony  of  fate, — the  majority  of  his 
master-works  were  evolved  from  a  mind  shut  away  from  the  pleas- 
ures and  disturbances  of  earthly  sounds,  and  beset  by  invalidism  and 
suffering.  Naturally  genial,  he  grew  morbidly  sensitive.  Infirmities 
of  temper  as  well  as  of  body  marked  him  for  their  own.  But  under- 
neath all  superficial  shortcomings  of  his  intensely  human  nature  was 
a  Shakespearean  dignity  of  moral  and  intellectual  individuality. 

It  is  not  necessary  here  even  to  touch  on  the  works  that  follow 
him.  They  stand  now  as  firmly  as  ever  —  perhaps  more  firmly  —  in 
the  honor  and  the  affection  of  all  the  world  of  auditors  in  touch  with 
the  highest  expressions  in  the  tone- world.  The  mere  mention  of  such 
monuments  as  the  sonatas,  the  nine  symphonies,  the  Mass  in  D  minor, 
the  magnificent  chain  of  overtures,  the  dramatic  concert-arias,  does  not 
exhaust  the  list.  They  are  the  vivid  self-expressions  of  one  who 
learned  in  suffering  what  he  taught  in  song:  a  man  whose  personality 
impressed  itself  into  almost  everything  that  he  wrote,  upon  almost 
every  one  whom  he  met,  and  who  towers  up  as  impressively  as  the 
author  of  <  Hamlet,^  the  sculptor  of  *  Moses,*  the  painter  of  <  The 
Last  Supper.* 

It  is  perhaps  interesting  to  mention  that  the  very  chirography  of 
Beethoven's  letters  is  eloquent  of  the  man.  Handwriting  is  apt  to 
be.  Mendelssohn,  the  well-balanced,  the  precise,  wrote  like  copper- 
plate. Wagner  wrote  a  fine  strong  hand,  seldom  with  erasures. 
Spontini,  the  soldier-like,  wrote  with  the  decision  of  a  soldier.  Bee- 
thoven's letters  and  notes  are  in  a  large,  open,  dashing  hand,  often 
scrawls,  always  with  the  blackest  of  ink,  full  of  changes,  and  not  a 
flourish  to  spare  —  the  handwriting  of  impulse  and  carelessness  as  to 
form,  compared  with  a  writer's  desire  of  making  his  meaning  clear. 


j^c2  LUDWIG   VAN   BEETHOVEN 


FROM    LETTER   TO   DR.    WEGELER,   VIENNA 

IN  WHAT  an  odious  light  have  you  exhibited  me  to  myself!     Oh! 
I  acknowledge  it,   I  do  not  deserve  your  friendship.      It  was 
no   intentional   or   deliberate   malice   that   induced   me   to  act 
towards  you  as  I  did  —  but  inexcusable  thoughtlessness  alone. 

I  say  no  more.  I  am  coming  to  throw  myself  into  your  arms, 
and  to  entreat  you  to  restore  me  my  lost  friend ;  and  you  will 
give  him  back  to  me,  to  your  penitent,  loving,  and  ever  grateful 

Beethoven. 


TO  THE   SAME 

Vienna,  June  29th,   1800. 
My  dear  and  valued  Wegeler: 

How  MUCH  I  thank  you  for  your  remembrance  of  me,  little  as 
I  deserve  it  or  have  sought  to  deserve  it;  and  yet  you  are 
so  kind  that  you  allow  nothing,  not  even  my  unpardonable 
neglect,  to  discourage  you,  always  remaining  the  same  true,  good, 
and  faithful  friend.  That  I  can  ever  forget  you  or  yours,  once 
so  dear  and  precious  to  me,  do  not  for  a  moment  believe.  There 
are  times  when  I  find  myself  longing  to  see  you  again,  and 
wishing  that  I  could  go  to  stay  with  you.  My  fatherland,  that 
lovely  region  where  I  first  saw  the  light,  is  still  as  distinct  and 
beauteous  in  my  eyes  as  when  I  quitted  you;  in  short,  I  shall 
esteem  the  time  when  I  once  more  see  you,  and  again  greet 
Father  Rhine,  as  one  of  the  happiest  periods  of  my  life.  When 
this  may  be  I  cannot  yet  tell,  but  at  all  events  I  may  say  that 
you  shall  not  see  me  again  till  I  have  become  not  only  eminent 
as  an  artist,  but  better  and  more  perfect  as  a  man;  and  if  the 
condition  of  our  fatherland  be  then  more  prosperous,  my  art 
shall  be  entirely  devoted  to  the  benefit  of  the  poor.  Oh,  bliss- 
ful moment! — how  happy  do  I  esteem  myself  that  I  can  expedite 
it  and  bring  it  to  pass! 

You  desire  to  know  something  of  my  position:  well!  it  is  by 
no  means  bad.  However  incredible  it  may  appear,  I  must  tell 
you  that  Lichnowsky  has  been,  and  still  is,  my  warmest  friend 
(slight  dissensions  occurred  occasionally  between  us,  and  yet  they 
only  served  to  strengthen  our  friendship).     He  settled  on  me  last 


LUDWIG   VAN  BEETHOVEN  ly^^ 

year  the  sum  of  six  hundred  florins,  for  which  I  am  to  draw  on 
him  till  I  can  procure  some  suitable  situation.  My  compositions 
are  very  profitable,  and  I  may  really  say  that  I  have  almost 
more  commissions  than  it  is  possible  for  me  to  execute.  I  can 
have  six  or  seven  publishers  or  more  for  every  piece  if  I  choose: 
they  no  longer  bargain  with  me  —  I  demand,  and  they  pay  —  so 
you  see  this  is  a  very  good  thing.  For  instance,  I  have  a  friend 
in  distress,  and  my  purse  does  not  admit  of  my  assisting  him  at 
once,  but  I  have  only  to  sit  down  and  write,  and  in  a  short  time 
he  is  relieved.  I  am  also  become  more  economical  than  for- 
merly.    ... 

To  give  you  some  idea  of  my  extraordinary  deafness,  I  must 
tell  you  that  in  the  theatre  I  am  obliged  to  lean  close  up  against 
the  orchestra  in  order  to  understand  the  actors,  and  when  a  little 
way  off  I  hear  none  of  the  high  notes  of  instruments  or  singers. 
It  is  most  astonishing  that  in  conversation  some  people  never 
seem  to  observe  this;  as  I  am  subject  to  fits  of  absence,  they 
attribute  it  to  that  cause.  Often  I  can  scarcely  hear  a  person  if 
he  speaks  low;  I  can  distinguish  the  tones  but  not  the  words,  and 
yet  I  feel  it  intolerable  if  any  one  shouts  to  me.  Heaven  alone 
knows  how  it  is  to  end!  Vering  declares  that  I  shall  certainly 
improve,  even  if  I  be  not  entirely  restored.  How  often  have  I 
cursed  my  existence !  Plutarch  led  me  to  resignation.  I  shall 
strive  if  possible  to  set  Fate  at  defiance,  although  there  must  be 
moments  in  my  life  when  I  cannot  fail  to  be  the  most  unhappy 
of  God's  creatures.  I  entreat  you  to  say  nothing  of  my  afHiction 
to  any  one,  not  even  to  Lorchen.  I  confide  the  secret  to  you 
alone,  and  entreat  you  some  day  to  correspond  with  Vering  on 
the  subject.  If  I  continue  in  the  same  state,  I  shall  come  to 
you  in  the  ensuing  spring,  when  you  must  engage  a  house  for 
me  somewhere  in  the  country,  amid  beautiful  scenery,  and  I 
shall  then  become  a  rustic  for  a  year,  which  may  perhaps  effect 
a  change.  Resignation!  —  what  a  miserable  refuge!  and  yet  it  is 
my  sole  remaining  one.  You  will  forgive  my  thus  appealing  to 
your  kindly  sympathies  at  a  time  when  your  own  position  is  sad 
enough. 

Farewell,  my  kind,  faithful  Wegeler!  Rest  assured  of  the  love 
and  friendship  of  your 

Beethoven. 


lyr^  LUDWIG  VAN  BEETHOVEN 


FROM  THE  LETTERS  TO  BETTINA  BRENTANO 

NEVER  was  there  a  lovelier  spring  than  this  year;  I  say  so,  and 
feel  it  too,  because  it  was  then  I  first  knew  you.  You  have 
yourself  seen  that  in  society  I  am  like  a  fish  on  the  sand, 
which  writhes  and  writhes,  but  cannot  get  away  till  some  benevo- 
lent Galatea  casts  it  back  into  the  mighty  ocean.  I  was  indeed 
fairly  stranded,  dearest  friend,  when  surprised  by  you  at  a  moment 
in  which  moroseness  had  entirely  mastered  me;  but  how  quickly 
it  vanished  at  your  aspect!  I  was  at  once  conscious  that  you 
came  from  another  sphere  than  this  absurd  world,  where,  with 
the  best  inclinations,  I  cannot  open  my  ears.  I  am  a  wretched 
creature,  and  yet  I  complain  of  others ! !  You  will  forgive  this 
from  the  goodness  of  heart  that  beams  in  your  eyes,  and  the  good 
sense  manifested  by  your  ears;  at  least  they  understand  how  to 
flatter,  by  the  mode  in  which  they  listen.  My  ears  are,  alas!  a 
partition-wall,  through  which  I  can  with  difficulty  hold  any  inter- 
course with  my  fellow-creatures.  Otherwise  perhaps  I  might 
have  felt  more  assured  with  you;  but  I  was  only  conscious  of 
the  full,  intelligent  glance  from  your  eyes,  which  affected  me  so 
deeply  that  never  can  I  forget  it.  My  dear  friend !  dearest  girl !  — • 
Art !  who  comprehends  it  ?  with  whom  can  I  discuss  this  mighty 
goddess  ?  How  precious  to  me  were  the  few  days  when  we 
talked  together,  or,  I  should  rather  say,  corresponded !  I  have 
carefully  preserved  the  little  notes  with  your  clever,  charming, 
most  charming  answers;  so  I  have  to  thank  my  defective  hearing 
for  the  greater  part  of  our  fugitive  intercourse  being  written 
down.  Since  you  left  this  I  have  had  some  unhappy  hours, — 
hours  of  the  deepest  gloom,  when  I  could  do  nothing.  I  wan- 
dered for  three  hours  in  the  Schonbrunn  Allde  after  you  left  us, 
but  no  ongel  met  me  there  to  take  possession  of  me  as  you  did. 
Pray  forgive,  my  dear  friend,  this  deviation  from  the  original 
key,  but  I  must  have  such  intervals  as  a  relief  to  my  heart. 
You  have  no  doubt  written  to  Goethe  about  me  ?  I  would  gladly 
bury  my  head  in  a  sack,  so  that  I  might  neither  see  nor  hear 
what  goes  on  in  the  world,  because  I  shall  meet  you  there  no 
more ;  but  I  shall  get  a  letter  from  you  ?  Hope  sustains  me,  as 
it  does  half  the  world;  through  life  she  has  been  my  close  com- 
panion, or  what  would  have  become  of  me  ?     I  send  you  ^  Kennst 


LUDWIG   VAN   BEETHOVEN  j^^^ 

Du  das  Land,*  written  with  my  own  hand,    as  a  remembrance  of 
the  hour  when  I  first  knew  you.     .     .     . 

If  you  mention  me  when  you  write  to  Goethe,  strive  to  find 
words  expressive  of  my  deep  reverence  and  admiration.  I  am 
about  to  write  to  him  myself  with  regard  to  ^  Egmont,  *  for 
which  I  have  written  some  music  solely  from  my  love  for  his 
poetry,  which  always  delights  me.  Who  can  be  sufficiently  grate- 
ful to  a  great  poet, —  the  most  precious  jewel  of  a  nation! 

Kings  and  princes  can  indeed  create  professors  and  privy- 
councillors,  and  confer  titles  and  decorations,  but  they  cannot 
make  great  men, —  spirits  that  soar  above  the  base  turmoil  of 
this  world.  There  their  powers  fail,  and  this  it  is  that  forces 
them  to  respect  us.  When  two  persons  like  Goethe  and  myself 
meet,  these  grandees  cannot  fail  to  perceive  what  such  as  we 
consider  great.  Yesterday  on  our  way  home  we  met  the  whole 
Imperial  family;  we  saw  them  coming  some  way  off,  when 
Goethe  withdrew  his  arm  from  mine,  in  order  to  stand  aside; 
and  say  what  I  would,  I  could  not  prevail  on  him  to  make 
another  step  in  advance.  I  pressed  down  my  hat  more  firmly 
on  my  head,  buttoned  up  my  great-coat,  and  crossing  my  arms 
behind  me,  I  made  my  way  through  the  thickest  portion  of  the 
crowd.  Princes  and  courtiers  formed  a  lane  for  me;  Archduke 
Rudolph  took  off  his  hat,  and  the  Empress  bowed  to  me  first. 
These  great  ones  of  the  earth  know  me.  To  my  infinite  amuse- 
ment, I  saw  the  procession  defile  past  Goethe,  who  stood  aside 
with  his  hat  off,  bowing  profoundly.  I  afterwards  took  him 
sharply  to  task  for  this;  I  gave  him  no  quarter  and  upbraided 
him  with  all  his  sins. 


TO    COUNTESS    GIULIETTA    GUICCIARDI 

Monday  Evening,  July  6th. 

ou    grieve!     dearest    of    all    beings!     I    have    just    heard    that 
the    letters    must    be    sent    off    very    early.     Mondays    and 

Thursdays  are  the  only  days  when  the   post  goes  to   K 

from  here.  You  grieve !  Ah !  where  I  am,  there  you  are  ever 
with  me:  how  earnestly  shall  T  strive  to  pass  my  life  with  you, 
and  what  a  life  will  it  be  ! ! !     Whereas  now ! !   without  you ! !   and 


Y 


^756 


LUDWIG   VAN   BEETHOVEN 


persecuted  by  the  kindness  of  others,  which  I  neither  deserve 
nor  try  to  deserve !  The  servility  of  man  towards  his  fcUow-man 
pains  me,  and  when  I  regard  myself  as  a  component  part  of  the 
universe,  what  am  I,  what  is  he  who  is  called  the  greatest?  — 
and  yet  herein  are  displayed  the  godlike  feelings  of  humanity !  — 
I  w^eep  in  thinking  that  you  will  receive  no  intelligence  from  me 
till  probably  Saturday.  However  dearly  you  may  love  me,  I 
love  you  more  fondly  still.  Never  conceal  your  feelings  from 
me.  Good-night!  As  a  patient  at  these  baths,  I  must  now  go 
to  rest.  [A  few  words  are  here  effaced  by  Beethoven  himself.] 
Oh,  heavens!  so  near,  and  yet  so  far!  "  Is  not  our  love  a  truly 
celestial  mansion,   but  firm  as  the  vault  of  heaven  itself  ? 

July  7th. 
Good  morning! 

Even  before  I  rise,  my  thoughts  throng  to  you,  my  immortal 
beloved!  —  sometimes  full  of  joy,  and  yet  again  sad,  waiting  to 
see  whether  Fate  will  hear  us.  I  must  live  either  wholly  with 
you,  or  not  at  all.  Indeed,  I  have  resolved  to  wander  far  from 
you  till  the  moment  arrives  when  I  can  fly  into  your  arms,  and 
feel  that  they  are  my  home,  and  send  forth  my  soul  in  unison 
with  yours  into  the  realm  of  spirits.  Alas!  it  must  be  so!  You 
will  take  courage,  for  you  know  my  fidelity.  Never  can  another 
possess    my    heart  —  never,  never!     Oh,    heavens!     Why    must    I 

fly   from   her   I   so   fondly  love  ?  and  yet  my  existence  in   W 

was  as  miserable  as  here.  Your  love  made  me  the  most  happy 
and  yet  the  most  unhappy  of  men.  At  my  age,  life  requires  a 
uniform  equality ;  can  this  be  found  in  our  mutual  relations  ? 
My  angel!  I  have  this  moment  heard  that  the  post  goes  every 
day,  so  I  must  conclude  that  you  may  get  this  letter  the  sooner. 
Be  calm !  for  we  can  only  attain  our  object  of  living  together  by 
the  calm  contemplation  of  our  existence.  Continue  to  love  me. 
Yesterday,  to-day,  what  longings  for  you,  what  tears  for  you! 
for  you!  for  you!  my  life!  my  all!  Farewell!  Oh,  love  me  for 
ever,  and  never  doubt  the  faithful  heart  of  your  lover,  L. 

Ever  thine. 

Ever  mine. 

Ever  each  other's. 


LUDWIG  VAN   BEETHOVEN 


1757 


o 


TO  MY  BROTHERS  CARL  AND  JOHANN  BEETHOVEN 

Heiligenstadt,  Oct.   6th,   1802. 

H !  YE  who  think  or  declare  me  to  be  hostile,  morose,  and 
misanthropical,  how  unjust  you  are,  and  how  little  you 
know  the  secret  cause  of  what  appears  thus  to  you!  My 
heart  and  mind  were  ever  from  childhood  prone  to  the  most  ten- 
der feelings  of  affection,  and  I  was  always  disposed  to  accomplish 
something  great.  But  you  must  remember  that  six  years  ago  I 
was  attacked  by  an  incurable  malady,  aggravated  by  unskillful 
physicians,  deluded  from  year  to  year,  too,  by  the  hope  of  relief, 
and  at  length  forced  to  the  conviction  of  a  lasting  affliction  (the 
cure  of  which  may  go  on  for  years,  and  perhaps  after  all  prove 
impracticable). 

Born  with  a  passionate  and  excitable  temperament,  keenly  sus- 
ceptible to  the  pleasures  of  society,  I  was  yet  obliged  early  in 
life  to  isolate  myself,  and  to  pass  my  existence  in  solitude.  If  I 
at  any  time  resolved  to  surmount  all  this,  oh!  how  cruelly  was  I 
again  repelled  by  the  experience,  sadder  than  ever,  of  my  defect- 
ive hearing!  —  and  yet  I  found  it  impossible  to  say  to  others: 
Speak  louder,  shout!  for  I  am  deaf!  Alas!  how  could  I  proclaim 
the  deficiency  of  a  sense  which  ought  to  have  been  inore  perfect 
with  me  than  with  other  men  —  a  sense  which  I  once  possessed 
in  the  highest  perfection,  to  an  extent  indeed  that  few  of  my 
profession  ever  enjoyed!  Alas!  I  cannot  do  this!  Forgive  me 
therefore  when  you  see  me  withdraw  from  you  with  whom  I 
would  so  gladly  mingle.  My  misfortune  is  doubly  severe  from 
causing  me  to  be  misunderstood.  No  longer  can  I  enjoy  recrea- 
tion in  social  intercourse,  refined  conversation,  or  mutual  out- 
pourings of  thought.  Completely  isolated,  I  only  enter  society 
when  compelled  to  do  so.  I  must  live  like  an  exile.  In  company 
I  am  assailed  by  the  most  painful  apprehensions,  from  the  dread 
of  being  exposed  to  the  risk  of  my  condition  being  observed.  It 
was  the  same  during  the  last  six  months  I  spent  in  the  country. 
My  intelligent  physician  recommended  me  to  spare  my  hearing 
as  much  as  possible,  which  was  quite  in  accordance  with  my 
present  disposition,  though  sometimes,  tempted  by  my  natural 
inclination  for  society,  I  allowed  myself  to  be  beguiled  into  it. 
But  what  humiliation  when  any  one  beside  me  heard  a  flute  in 
the  far  distance,  while  I  heard  nothing^  or  when  others  heard  a 


1758 


LUDWIG   VAN   BEETHOVEN 


shepherd  singing,  and  I  still  heard  nothing!  Such  things  brought 
me  to  the  verge  of  desperation,  and  well-nigh  caused  me  to  put 
an  end  to  mv  life.  Art!  art  alone,  deterred  me.  Ah!  how 
could  I  possibly  quit  the  world  before  bringing  forth  all  that  I 
felt  it  was  my  vocation  to  produce  ?  And  thus  I  spared  this 
miserable  life  —  so  utterly  miserable  that  any  sudden  change  may 
reduce  me  at  any  moment  from  my  best  condition  into  the  worst. 
It  is  decreed  that  I  must  now  choose  Patience  for  my  guide ! 
This  I  have  done.  I  hope  the  resolve  will  not  fail  me,  stead- 
fastly to  persevere  till  it  may  please  the  inexorable  Fates  to  cut 
the  thread  of  my  life.  Perhaps  I  may  get  better,  perhaps  not. 
I  am  prepared  for  either.  Constrained  to  become  a  philosopher 
in  my  twenty-eighth  year!  This  is  no  slight  trial,  and  more 
severe  on  an  artist  than  on  any  one  else.  God  looks  into  my 
heart,  he  searches  it,  and  knows  that  love  for  man  and  feelings  of 
benevolence  have  their  abode  there !  Oh !  ye  who  may  one  day 
read  this,  think  that  yoii  have  done  me  injustice;  and  let  any 
one  similarly  afflicted  be  consoled  by  finding  one  like  himself, 
who,  in  defiance  of  all  the  obstacles  of  nature,  has  done  all  in 
his  power  to  be  included  in  the  ranks  of  estimable  artists  and 
men.  My  brothers  Carl  and  Johann,  as  soon  as  I  am  no  more, 
if  Professor  Schmidt  be  still  alive,  beg  him  in  my  name  to 
describe  my  malady,  and  to  add  these  pages  to  the  analysis  of 
my  disease,  that  at  least,  so  far  as  possible,  the  world  may  be 
reconciled  to  me  after  my  death.  I  also  hereby  declare  you  both 
heirs  of  my  small  fortune  (if  so  it  may  be  called).  Share  it  fairly, 
agree  together  and  assist  each  other.  You  know  that  anything 
you  did  to  give  me  pain  has  been  long  forgiven.  I  thank  you, 
my  brother  Carl  in  particular,  for  the  attachment  you  have  shown 
me  of  late.  My  wish  is  that  you  may  enjoy  a  happier  life,  and 
one  more  free  from  care  than  mine  has  been.  Recommend  Virtue 
to  your  children;  that  alone,  and  not  wealth,  can  insure  happiness. 
I  speak  from  experience.  It  was  Virtue  alone  which  sustained 
me  in  my  misery;  I  have  to  thank  her  and  Art  for  not  having 
ended  my  life  by  suicide.  Farewell!  Love  each  other.  I  grate- 
fully   thank    all    my    friends,    especially    Prince    Lichnowsky    and 

Professor   Schmidt.     I    wish    one  of   you    to  keep   Prince   L 's 

instruments;  but  I  trust  this  will  give  rise  to  no  dissension 
between  you.  If  you  think"  it  more  beneficial,  however,  you  have 
only  to  dispose  of  them.  How  much  I  shall  rejoice  if  I  can  serve 
you  even  in  the  grave !     So  be  it  then !     I  joyfully  hasten  to  meet 


LUDWIG  VAN  BEETHOVEN  ly^o 

Death.  If  he  comes  before  I  have  had  the  opportunity  of  de- 
veloping all  my  artistic  powers,  then,  notwithstanding-  my  cruel 
fate,  he  will  come  too  early  for  me,  and  I  should  wish  for  him 
at  a  more  distant  period;  but  even  then  I  shall  be  content,  for 
his  advent  will  release  me  from  a  state  of  endless  suffering. 
Come  when  he  may,  I  shall  meet  him  with  courage.  Farewell ! 
Do  not  quite  forget  me,  even  in  death:  I  deserve  this  from  you, 
because  during  my  life  I  so  often  thought  of  you,  and  wished  to 
make  you  happy.     Amen! 

LuDwiG  VAN  Beethoven. 

[  Written  on  the  out  side. "l 

Thus,  then,  I  take  leave  of  you,  and  with  Sadness  too.  The 
fond  hope  I  brought  with  me  here,  of  being  to  a  certain  degree 
cured,  now  utterly  forsakes  me.  As  autumn  leaves  fall  and 
wither,  so  are  my  hopes  blighted.  Almost  as  I  came,  I  depart. 
Even  the  lofty  courage  that  so  often  animated  me  in  the  lovely 
days  of  summer  is  gone  forever.  O  Providence!  vouchsafe  me 
one  day  of  pure  felicity!  How  long  have  I  been  estranged  from 
the  glad  echo  of  true  joy!  When!  O  my  God!  when  shall  I  again 
feel  it  in  the  temple  of  nature  and  of  man?  —  never?  Ah!  that 
would  be  too  hard! 

To  be  read  and  fulfilled  after  my  death  by  my  brothers  Carl 
and  Johann. 


TO   THE   ROYAL  AND    IMPERIAL  HIGH    COURT   OF  APPEAL 

January  7th,    1820. 

'T^HE  welfare  of  my  nephew  is  dearer  to  my  heart   than  it  can 
1       be    to    any   one    else.      I    am    myself  childless,  and  have   no 
relations  except  this  boy,  who  is  full  of  talent,   and  I  have 
good  grounds  to  hope  the  best  for  him,  if  properly  trained. 


My  efforts  and  wishes  have  no  other  aim  than  to  give  the  boy 
the  best  possible  education  —  his  abilities  justifying  the  brightest 
hopes  —  and  to  fulfill  the  trust  placed  in  my  brotherly  love  by 
his  father.  The  shoot  is  still  flexible;  but  if  longer  neglected  it 
will   become   crooked   and  outgrow  the  gardener's  training  hand, 


i-(3o  XUDWIG  VAN   BEETHOVEN 

and  upriji^ht  bearing-,  intellect,  and  character  be  destroyed  for 
ever.     . 

I  know  no  duty  more  sacred  than  the  education  and  training 
of  a  child.  The  chief  duties  of  a  guardian  consist  in  knowing 
how  to  appreciate  what  is  good,  and  in  adopting  a  right  course; 
then  alone  has  proper  attention  been  devoted  to  the  welfare  of 
his  ward,  whereas  in  opposing  what  is  good  he  neglects  his  duty. 

Indeed,  keeping  in  view  what  is  most  for  the  benefit  of  the 
boy,  I  do  not  object  to  the  mother  in  so  far  sharing  in  the  duties 
of  a  guardian,  that  she  may  visit  her  son,  and  see  him,  and  be 
apprised  of  all  the  measures  adopted  for  his  education;  but  to 
intrust  her  with  his  sole  guardianship  without  a  strict  guardian 
by  her  side  would  cause  the  irretrievable  ruin  of  her  son. 

On  these  cogent  grounds  I  reiterate  my  well-founded  solicita- 
tion, and  feel  the  more  confident  of  a  favorable  answer,  as  the 
welfare  of  my  nephew  alone  guides  my  steps  in  this  affair. 

TO   BARONESS  VON   DROSSDICK 

I  LIVE  in  entire  quiet  and  solitude;  and  even  though  occasional 
flashes  of  light  arouse  me,  still  since  you  all  left,  I  feel 
a  hopeless  void  which  even  my  art,  usually  so  faithful  to  me, 
has  not  yet  triumphed  over.  Your  pianoforte  is  ordered,  and 
you  shall  soon  have  it.  What  a  difference  you  must  have  dis- 
covered between  the  treatment  of  the  Theme  I  extemporized  on 
the  other  evening,  and  the  mode  in  which  I  have  recently  writ- 
ten it  out  for  you!  You  must  explain  this  yourself,  only  do  not 
find  the  solution  in  the  punch!  How  happy  you  are  to  get 
away  so  soon  to  the  country!  I  cannot  enjoy  this  luxury  till  the 
8th.  I  look  forward  to  it  with  the  delight  of  a  child.  What 
happiness  I  shall  feel  in  wandering  among  groves  and  woods,  and 
among  trees  and  plants  and  rocks!  No  man  on  earth  can  love 
the  country  as  I  do!  Thickets,  trees,  and  rocks  supply  the  echo 
man  longs  for! 


LUDWIG  VAN   BEETHOVEN 


1761 


TO   ZMESKALL 

1811. 

MOST  high-born  of  men! 
We  beg  you  to  confer  some  goose-quills  on  us;  we  will 
in  return  send  you  a  whole  bunch  of  the  same  sort,  that 
you  may  not  be  obliged  to  pluck  out  your  own.  It  is  just  possi- 
ble that  you  may  yet  receive  the  Grand  Cross  of  the  Order  of 
the  Violoncello.  We  remain  your  gracious  and  most  friendly  of 
all  friends,  Beethoven. 


TO   ZMESKALL 

February  2d,   1812, 

MOST  wonderful  of  men! 
We  beg  that  your  servant  will  engage  a  person  to  fit  up 
my  apartment;    as  he  is  acquainted  with  the  lodgings,  he 
can   fix   the   proper   price   at   once.      Do   this   soon,   you   Carnival 
scamp !!!!!!! 

The  inclosed  note  is  at  least  a  week  old. 


TO   HIS   BROTHER   JOHANN 

Baden,  May  6th,   1825. 

THE  bell  and  bell-pulls,  etc.,  etc.,  are  on  no  account  whatever 
to  be  left  in  my  former  lodging.  No  proposal  was  ever 
made  to  these  people  to  take  any  of  my  things.  Indis- 
position prevented  my  sending  for  it,  and  the  locksmith  had 
not  come  during  my  stay  to  take  down  the  bell;  otherwise  it 
might  have  been  at  once  removed  and  sent  to  me  in  town,  as 
they  have  no  right  whatever  to  retain  it.  Be  this  as  it  may, 
I  am  quite  determined  not  to  leave  the  bell  there,  for  I  require 
one  here,  and  therefore  intend  to  use  the  one  in  question  for 
my  purpose,  as  a  similar  one  would  cost  me  twice  as  much  as 
in  Vienna,  bell-pulls  being -the  most  expensive  things  locksmiths 
have.  If  necessary,  apply  at  once  to  the  police.  The  window 
in  my  room  is  precisely  in  the  same  state  as  when  I  took  pos- 
session, but  I  am  willing  to  pay  for  it,  and  also  for  the  one  in 
the  kitchen,    2   florins   12   kreuzers,   for  the  two.      The  key  I  will 

not   pay   for,    as   I   found   none;    on   the   contrary,    the   door  was 
III — III 


1762 


LUDWIG  VAN  BEETHOVEN 


fastened  or  nailed  up  when  I  came,  and  remained  in  the  same 
condition  till  I  left;  there  never  was  a  key,  so  of  course  neither 
I  myself,  nor  those  who  preceded  me,  could  make  use  of  one. 
Perhaps  it  is  intended  to  make  a  collection,  in  which  case  I  am 
willing  to  put  my  hand  in  my  pocket. 

LuDwiG  VAN  Beethoven. 


TO    STEPHAN   V.    BREUNING 

My  dear  and  much  loved  Stephan  : 

MAY  our  temporary  estrangement  be  for  ever  effaced  by  the 
portrait  I  now  send.  I  know  that  I  have  rent  your  heart. 
The  emotion  which  you  cannot  fail  now  to  see  in  mine  has 
sufficiently  punished  me  for  it.  There  was  no  malice  towards 
you  in  my  heart,  for  then  I  should  be  no  longer  worthy  of  your 
friendship.  It  was  passion  both  on  your  part  and  on  mine;  but 
mistrust  was  rife  within  me,  for  people  had  come  between  us, 
unworthy  both  of  you  and  of  me. 

My  portrait  was  long  ago  intended  for  you;  you  knew  that  it 
was  destined  for  some  one  —  and  to  whom  could  I  give  it  with 
such  warmth  of  heart,  as  to  you,  my  faithful,  good,  and  noble 
Stephan  ? 

Forgive  me  for  having  grieved  you,  but  I  did  not  myself 
suffer  less  when  I  no  longer  saw  you  near  m.e.  I  then  first 
keenly  felt  how  dear  you  were,  and  ever  will  be  to  my  heart. 
Surely  you  will  once  more  fly  to  my  arms  as  you  formerly  did. 


1763 


CARL  MICHAEL   BELLMAN 

(1 740-1 795) 

BY   OLGA   FLINCH 

s^ARL  Michael  Bellman  was  born  in  Stockholm  on  the  4th  of 
February,  1740.  His  father,  son  of  a  professor  at  Upsala 
University,  held  a  government  office;  of  his  mother  he 
wrote  that  she  was  *^  fair  as  day,  unspeakably  good,  dressed  prettily, 
was  kind  to  everybody,  of  a  refined  nature,  and  had  an  excellent 
voice.  >*  From  her  he  undoubtedly  inherited  the  warm,  genial  heart 
which  beats  in  every  one  of  his  songs.  His  father's  house  was  the 
rendezvous  of  many  of  the  noted  men  of  the  day,  among  them  the 
poet  Dalin,  who  was  then  at  the  zenith  of  his  popularity.  The  boy's 
unusual  gifts  were  early  recognized,  and  everything  was  done  to  give 
him  the  best  instruction,  especially  after  an  attack  of  fever,  during 
which  he  not  only  spoke  in  rhyme,  but  sang  his  first  improvised 
songs  in  a  clear,  true  voice.  The  tutor  who  was  then  chosen  taught 
him,  <<  besides  the  art  of  making  verse,  >^  English,  French,  German, 
and  Italian;  and  he  progressed  far  enough  in  these  studies  to  trans- 
late several  German  hymns  and  religious  and  philosophic  essays,  no 
doubt  influenced  in  this  choice  of  subjects  by  the  religious  atmosphere 
of  his  home.  Moreover,  he  taught  himself  to  play  the  zither,  and 
very  soon  began  to  pick  out  his  own  melodies  as  an  accompaniment 
to  his  songs.  The  instrument  he  used  had  been  brought  home  from 
Italy  by  his  grandfather,  became  his  closest  companion  throughout 
life,   and  is  now  kept  at  the  Royal  Academy  of  Arts  at  Stockholm. 

At  eighteen  he  entered  the  University  of  Upsala,  and  while 
there  wrote  a  satirical  poem,  ^The  Moon,*  which  he  submitted  to  the 
criticism  of  Dalin,  who  however  made  but  a  single  correction.  It 
was  written  in  the  manner  of  Dalin,  and  he  continued  to  be  influ- 
enced by  the  latter  until  his  twenty-fifth  year.  At  this  time,  and 
within  the  same  year,  his  father  and  mother  died,  and  seeking 
among  his  friends  the  social  stimulus  which  his  nature  craved,  he 
became  a  frequent  guest  at  the  inns  in  the  company  of  Hallman  and 
Krexel,  who  were  making  their  mark  by  their  poetic  and  dramatic 
writings.  It  was  then  that  his  peculiar  talent  came  to  its  own;  he 
threw  away  all  foreign  influence  and  began  to  sing  his  songs,  bom 
of  the  impression  of  the  moment  and  full  of  the  charm  of  spon- 
taneity.    Some   of   them   he    jotted   down    quickly,  most   of   them  he 


1764 


CARL   MICHAEL   BELLMAN 


sang  to  the  sound  of  his  zither,  often  fashioning  them  to  suit  well- 
known  melodies,  and  again  creating  the  melody  with  the  words,  for 
the  greater  part  set  in  a  form  of  verse  not  previously  used.  And  so 
inseparably  linked  are  words  and  melody,  that  it  has  not  occurred  to 
any  one  to  set  any  other  m.usic  to  Bellman's  songs  than  what  he 
originally  chose.  He  took  all  his  characters  out  of  the  life  he  saw 
around  him ;  and  with  the  appreciation  of  the  man  to  whom  the 
present  is  everything,  he  seized  the  charm  of  the  fleeting  moment 
and  expressed  it  with  such  simplicity  and  truth,  and  deep  feeling 
withal,  that  it  stands  forth  immortally  fresh  and  young.  A  number 
of  these  songs  have  probably  been  lost ;  he  had  no  thirst  for  fame, 
and  took  no  pains  to  circulate  them,  but  they  found  their  way  to  the 
public  in  written  copies  and  cheap  prints,  and  his  name  was  soon 
known  throughout  the  country. 

This  way  of  living  and  singing  like  the  birds  of  the  air  was,  how- 
ever, not  very  conducive  to  the  satisfaction  of  material  wants.  He 
had  made  two  attempts  to  go  into  business,  but  the  more  he  was 
seen  at  the  inns,   the  less  he  was  seen  at  his  business. 

Fortunately  for  him,  Gustavus  III.,  who  was  himself  a  poet,  be- 
came at  this  time  king  of  Sweden.  He  was  an  adherent  of  the 
French  school  of  poetry,  and  Bellman's  muse  could  hardly  be  said 
to  belong  to  this:  but  with  considerable  talent  as  a  dramatic  writer, 
Gustavus  appreciated  the  dramatic  quality  in  Bellman's  songs;  and 
when  Bellman  sent  him  a  rhymed  petition,  still  kept,  in  which  he 
wrote  that  "if  his  Majesty  would  not  most  graciously  give  him  an 
office,  he  would  most  obediently  be  obliged  to  starve  to  death  before 
Christmas,^*  the  king  made  him  secretary  of  the  lottery,  with  the  title 
of  court  secretary,  and  a  yearly  income  of  three  thousand  dollars. 
Bellman  promptly  gave  half  of  this  to  an  assistant,  who  did  the 
work,  and  continued  his  troubadour  life  on  the  other  half  with  a 
superb  disdain  of  future  needs.  His  affairs  so  well  in  order,  he 
could  afford  to  get  married;  and  chose  for  his  wife  Lovisa  Gronlund, 
a  girl  of  a  bright  intellect  and  strong  character,  of  which  she  ulti- 
mately had  great  need,  the  responsibilities  of  their  married  life  being 
left  altogether  to  her. 

Bellman  was  now  at  his  best;  about  this  time  he  wrote  most  of 
*  Fredman's  Songs  ^  and  <  Actions  concerning  the  Chapter  of  Bac^ 
chus  order.'  both  rich  in  lyric  gems;  he  was  the  favorite  compan- 
ion of  the  King,  to  whom  his  devotion  was  boundless,  and  he  was 
happy  in  his  chosen  friends  whose  company  inspired  him.  Never- 
theless he  was  now,  as  ever,  in  need  of  money.  Atterbom  tells  that 
"  One  day  the  King  met  him  on  the  street,  so  poorly  dressed  that 
he  instinctively  exclaimed,  *■  My  dear  Bellman,  how  poorly  you  are 
clad !  *      The    poet    answered   with   a   bow,   *  I   can    nevertheless   most 


CARL   MICHAEL   BELLMAN 


1765 


obediently  assure  your  Majesty  that  I  am  wearing  my  entire  ward- 
robe.''*  His  ready  wit  never  left  him.  "How  goes  the  world  with 
you?"  asked  the  King  once  when  they  met;  <*you  don't  look  to  me 
as  if  you  could  turn  a  single  rhyme  to-day.  >>  The  poet  bowed  and 
replied  on  the  spur  of  the  moment:  — 

«No  scrip  my  purse  doth  hold; 
My  lyre's  unstrung,  alas! 
But  yet  upon  my  glass 
Stands  Gustafs  name  in  gold.» 

Another  time  the  King  sent  his  men  for  him,  with  the  order  to 
bring  him  in  whatever  condition  they  found  him.  "  He  was  found 
not  entirely  free  from  drink,  and  not  very  presentable,  but.  was  never- 
theless carried  off,  zither  and  all,  to  Haga  Castle,  where  he  drank 
some  champagne,  sang  some  songs,  drank  a  little  more,  and  finally 
fell  asleep.  The  King  left  him  so  to  go  to  his  supper;  and  when  he 
returned  and  found  his  guest  still  sleeping,  he  remarked,  <  I  wonder 
what  Bellman  would  say  if  I  awoke  him  now  and  asked  him  to  give 
me  a  song.'  The  poet  sat  up,  blinked  with  his  eyes,  and  said, 
<Then  Bellman  would  say, —  listen;'  whereupon  he  sang  to  the  tune 
of  *  Malbrouck  s'en  va-t-en  guerre  ' :  — 

«  <  Oh,  so  heavily,  heavily  trailing, 
The  clouds  over  Haga  are  sailing. 
And  the  stars  their  bright  glances  are  veiling, 
While  woods  in  the  gloom  disappear. 
Go,   King,  thy  rest  is  dear. 
Go,  King,  thy  respite  taking, 
Rest  softly,  rest  softly,  then  waking. 
When  dawn  through  the  darkness  is  breaking, 
Thy  people  with  mild  rule  thou  cheer  !> 

Then  he  fell  into  his  former  position  again,  and  was  carried  home 
asleep  with  a  little  gift  in  his  hand." 

The  task  of  collecting,  preserving,  and  publishing  his  works  fell 
entirely  upon  his  friends;  if  it  had  depended  on  him,  they  would 
probably  never  have  been  collected,  much  less  published. 

During  the  last  fifteen  years  of  his  life,  from  1780  to  1795,  his 
health  grew  very  poor.  In  1791  he  was  invited  to  be  present  at 
the  distribution  of  degrees  at  Upsala,  and  at  the  dinner  he  returned 
a.  toast  with  a  song  born  of  the  moment;  but  his  voice  had  grown  so 
Weak  from  lung  trouble  that  only  those  nearest  to  him  could  hear 
him.  To  add  to  his  sufferings,  he  had  to  meet  the  great  sorrow  of 
his  King's  death  at  the  hand  of  a  murderer,  and  his  poem  on  the 
*  Death  and  Memory  of  the  King  ^  was  not  of  a  nature  to  make 
friends  for  him  at  the  new  court.     Thus  it  happened  that,  poor  and 


1766 


CARL   MICHAEL  BELLMAN 


broken  in  health,  he  was  put  into  the  debtor's  prison  in  the  very 
castle  where  he  had  been  so  happy  a  guest.  Hallman  and  Krexel 
and  others  of  his  best  friends,  as  devoted  to  him  as  ever,  were 
unable  to  obtain  his  release;  but  he  was  at  last  bailed  out  by  some 
one,  who  as  recompense  asked  him  to  sing  one  of  his  jolly  songs, 
and  in  his  poor  broken  voice  he  sang  *■  Drink  out  thy  glass,  see, 
Death  awaits  thee.^  Atterbom  remarks  about  the  man  in  question, 
**And  maybe  he  did  not  find  that  song  so  jolly  after  all.>> 

While  in  prison  he  sent  in  a  petition  to  the  King,  —  somewhat 
different  from  his  first  petition  to  Gustavus  III., —  in  which  he  asked 
permission  to  live  in  the  castle  until  his  death.  The  following  is  one 
of  the  verses:  — 

« Spring  commands;  the  birds  are  singing, 

Bees  are  swarming,  fishes  play; 

Now  and  then  the  zephyrs  stray. 
Breath  of  life  the  poet  bringfing. 
Lift  my  load  of  sorrow  clinging, 

Spare  me  one  small  nook,  I  pray.» 

Of  his  death  Atterbom  writes  as  follows:  — 

« He  had  been  the  favorite  of  the  nation  and  the  King,  content  wnth  the 
mere  necessities  of  life,  free  from  every  care,  not  even  desiring  the  immor- 
tality of  fame;  moderate  in  everything  except  in  enthusiasm,  he  had  enjoyed 
to  the  full  what  he  wanted, — friendship,  wine,  and  music.  Now  he  lived  to 
see  the  shadows  fall  over  his  life  and  genius.  Feeling  that  his  last  hour  was 
not  far  off,  he  sent  word  to  his  nearest  friends  that  a  meeting  with  them  as 
in  old  times  would  be  dear  to  him.  He  came  to  meet  them  almost  a  shadow, 
but  with  his  old  friendly  smile ;  even  in  the  toasts  he  took  part,  however 
moderately,  and  then  he  announced  that  he  would  let  them  <hear  Bellman 
once  more.>  The  spirit  of  song  took  possession  of  him,  more  powerfully  than 
ever,  and  all  the  rays  of  his  dying  imagination  were  centred  in  an  impro- 
vised good-by  song.  Throughout  an  entire  night,  under  continual  inspiration, 
he  sang  his  happy  life,  his  mild  King's  glory,  his  gratitude  to  Providence,  who 
let  him  be  bom  among  a  noble  people  in  this  beautiful  Northern  country, — 
finally  he  gave  his  grateful  good-by  to  every  one  present,  in  a  separate  stro- 
phe and  melody  expressing  the  peculiar  individuality  of  the  one  addressed 
and  his  relation  to  the  poet.  His  friends  begged  him  \vith  tears  to  stop,  and 
spare  his  already  much  weakened  lungs;  but  he  replied,  <  Let  us  che,  as  we 
have  lived,  in  music!) — emptied  his  last  glass  of  champagne,  and  began  at 
dawn  the  last  verse  of  his  song.» 

After  this  he  sang  no  more.  A  few  days  later  he  went  to  bed, 
lingered  for  ten  weeks,  and  died  on  the  nth  of  February,  1795,  aged 
fifty-four  years.     He  was  buried  in  Clara  cemetery. 

Bellman's  critics  have  given  themselves  much  trouble  about  his 
personal    character.      Some    have    thought    him    little    better    than    a 


CARL   MICHAEL  BEL1.MAN 


1767 


coarse  drunkard;  others  again  have  made  him  out  a  cynic  who 
sneered  at  the  life  he  depicted;  again  others  have  laid  the  weight 
on  the  note  found  in  *■  Drink  out  thy  glass,  *  and  have  seen  only  the 
underlying  sad  pathos  of  his  songs.  His  contemporaries  agree  that 
he  was  a  man  of  great  consideration  for  form,  and  assert  that  if 
there  are  coarse  passages  in  his  songs  it  is  because  they  only  could 
express  what  he  depicted.  All  coarseness  was  foreign  to  his  nature; 
he  was  reserved  and  somewhat  shy,  and  only  in  the  company  of  his 
chosen  few  did  he  open  his  heart. 

His  critics  have,  moreover,  assiduously  sought  the  moral  of  his 
works.  If  any  was  intended,  it  may  have  been  that  of  fighting  senti- 
mentality and  all  false  feeling;  but  it  seems  more  in  accordance 
with  his  entire  life  that  he  sang  out  of  the  fullness  of  his  heart,  as 
a  bird  sings,  simply  because  it  must  sing. 


TO  ULLA 

ULLA.  mine  Ulla,  tell  me,  may  I  hand  thee 
Reddest  of  strawberries  in  milk  or  wine  ? 
Or  from  the  pond  a  lively  fish  ?     Command  me ! 
Or,  from  the  well,  a  bowl  of  water  fine  ? 
Doors  are  blown  open,  the  wind  gets  the  blaming. 

Perfumes  exhale  from  flower  and  tree. 
Clouds  fleck  the  sky  and  the  sun  rises  flaming. 
As  you  see ! 
Isn't  it  heavenly — the  fish  market?     So? 
"  Heavenly,  oh  heavenly !  *^ 
**See  the  stately  trees  there,  standing  row  on  row, — 
Fresh,  green  leaves  show! 
And  that  pretty  bay 

Sparkling  there  ?  ^^     <<  Ah  yes !  >> 
•<*And,  seen  where  sunbeams  play, 
The  meadows'  loveliness  ? 
A-te  they  not  heavenly  —  those  bright  fields? — Confess!*^  — 

Heavenly ! 
Heavenly ! 


1768 


CARL  MICHAEL   BELLMAN 

Skal  and  good-noon,  fair  one  in  window  leaning, 
Hark  how  the  city  bells  their  peals  prolong! 
See  how  the  dust  the  verdant  turf  is  screening, 
Where  the  calashes  and  the  wagons  throng! 
Hand  from  the  window — he's  drowsy,  the  speaker, 
In  my  saddle  I  nod,   cousin  mine  — 
Primo  a  crust,  and  secundo  a  beaker, 
Hochlander  wine ! 
Isn't  it  heavenly  —  the  fish-market?     So? 
'*  Heavenly,   oh  heavenly !  " 
.    **  See  the  stately  trees  there,  standing  row  on  row, — 
Fresh,  green  leaves  show! 
And  that  pretty  bay 

Sparkling  there  ?  ^*     "  Ah  yes !  ** 
<*  And,   seen  where  simbeams  play. 
The  meadows'  loveliness  ? 
Are  they  not  heavenly  —  those  bright  fields? — Confess !**- 

Heavenly ! 
Heavenly ! 

Look,  Ulla  dear!     To  the  stable  they're  taking 

Whinnying,  prancing,  my  good  steed,  I  see. 
Still  in  his  stall-door  he  lifts  his  head,  making 

Efforts  to  look  up  to  thee :  just  to  thee ! 
Nature  itself  into  flames  will  be  bursting; 
Keep  those  bright  eyes  in  control ! 
Klang!  at  your  casement  my  heart,  too,  is  thirsting. 

Klang!     Your  Skal! 
Isn't  it  heavenly  —  the  fish-market?     So? 

<*  Heavenly,  oh  heavenly !  >> 
**  See  the  stately  trees  there,  standing  row  on  row, — 
Fresh,  green  leaves  show! 
And  that  pretty  bay 

Sparkling  there  ?  **     <'  Ah  yes !  * 
<*  And,  seen  where  sunbeams  play, 
The  meadows'  loveliness  ? 
Are  they  not  heavenly  —  those  bright  fields? — Confess !**- 

Heavenly! 
Heavenly! 


CARL   MICHAEL   BELLMAN 


CRADLE-SONG   FOR   MY   SON   CARL 

LITTLE  Carl,  sleep  soft  and  sweet: 
Thou'lt  soon  enough  be  waking; 
Soon  enough  ill  days  thoti'lt  meet. 
Their  bitterness  partaking. 
Earth's  an  isle  with  grief  o'ercast; 
Breathe  .our  best,  death  comes  at  last. 
We  but  dust  forsaking. 

Once,  where  flowed  a  peaceful  brook 
Through  a  rye-field's  stubble. 

Stood  a  little  boy  to  look 
At  himself;    his  double. 

Sweet  the  picture  was  to  see; 

All  at  once  it  ceased  to  be; 
Vanished  like  a  bubble! 

And  thus  it  is  with  life,  my  pet. 
And  thus  the  years  go  flying; 

Live  we  wisely,  gaily,  yet 

There's  no  escape  from  dying. 

Little  Carl  on  this  must  muse 

When  the  blossoms  bright  he  views 
On  spring's  bosom  lying. 

Slumber,  little  friend  so  wee; 

Joy  thy  joy  is  bringing. 
Clipped  from  paper  thou  shalt  see 
A  sleigh,  and  horses  springing; 
Then  a  house  of  cards  so  tall 
'  We  will  build  and  see  it  fall. 

And  little  songs  be  singing. 


1769 


u 


AMARYLLIS 

p,  Amaryllis!     Darling,  awaken! 
Through  the  still  bracken 

Soft  airs  swell; 
Iris,   all  dightly, 
Vestured  so  brightly, 

Coloreth  lightly 

Wood  and  dell. 


1770 


CARL   MICHAEL   BELLMAN 

Amaryllis,  thy  sweet  name  pronouncing, 
Thee  in  Neptune's  cool  embrace  announcing. 
Slumber's  god  the  while  his  sway  renouncing. 
O'er  your  eyes  sighs,  and  speech  yields  his  spell. 

Now  comes  the  fishing!     The  net  we  fasten; 
This  minute  hasten! 
Follow  me ! 
Don  your  skirt  and  jacket 
And  veil,   or  you'll  lack  it; 
Pike  and  trout  wait  a  racket; 
Sails  flap  free. 
Waken,  Amaryllis,   darling,  waken ! 
Let  me  not  by  thy  smile  be  forsaken : 
Then  by  dolphins  and  fair  sirens  overtaken, 
In  our  gay  boat  we'll  sport  in  company. 

Come  now,  your  rods,  lines,  and  nets  with  you  taking! 
The  day  is  breaking; 
Hasten  thee  nigh! 
Sweet  little  treasure, 
Think  ill  in  no  measure; 
For  thee  'twere  no  pleasure 
Me  to  deny. 
Let  us  to  the  little  shallows  wander, 
Or  beside  the  inlet  over  yonder, 
Where  the  pledge-knot  made  our  fond  love  fonder, 
O'er  which  Thyrsis  erst  was  moved  to  sigh. 

Step  in  the  boat,   then  —  both  of  us  singing. 
Love  his  wand  swinging 
Over  our  fate. 
JEol  is  moving. 
But  though  wild  proving, 
In  your  arms  loving 
Comfort  doth  wait. 
Blest,  on  angry  waves  of  ocean  riding. 
By  thee  clasped,  vain  'twere  this  dear  thought  hiding 
Death  shall  find  me  in  thy  pathway  biding. 
Sirens,  sing  ye,  and  my  voice  imitate! 


CARL   MICHAEL   BELLMAN 


ART  AND   POLITICS 


1771 


« y<~>  ooD  servant  Mollberg,  what's  happened  to  thee, 
It     Whom  without  coat  and  hatless  I  see  ? 

Bloody  thy  mouth  —  and'thou'rt  lacking  a  tooth! 
Where  have  you  been,   brother?  —  tell  me  the  truth.** 

«At  Rostock,  good  sir, 

Did  the  trouble  occur. 

Over  me  and  my  harp 

An  argument  sharp 
Arose,   touching  my  playing  —  pling  plingeli  plang; 
And  a  bow-legged  cobbler  coming  along 
Struck  me  in  the  mouth  —  pling  plingeli  plang, 

^*  I  sat  there  and  played  —  no  carouse  could  one  see  — 
The  Polish  Queen's  Polka  —  G-major  the  key: 
The  best  kind  of  people  were  gathered  around. 
And  each  drank  his  schoppen  <  down  to  the  ground.* 

I  don't  know  just  how 

Began  freshly  the  row, 

But  some  one  from  my  head 

Knocked  my  hat,   and  thus  said  : 
*What  is  Poland  to  thee?* — Pling  plingeli  plang — 

<  Play  us  no  polka !  *     Another  one  sang : 

<  Now  silent  be  !  * —  Pling  plingeli  plang. 

*<  Hear,   my  Maecenas,   what  still  came  to  pass. 
As  I  sat  there  in  quiet,  enjoying  my  glass, 
On  Poland's  condition  the  silence  I  broke  : 
*Know  ye,  good  people,*  aloud  thus  I  spoke, 

^  That  all  monarchs  I 

On  this  earth  do  defy 

My  harp  to  prevent 

From  giving  song  vent 
Throughout  all  this  land  —  pling  plingeli  plang! 
Did  only  a  single  string  to  it  hang, 
I'd  play  a  polka  —  pling  plingeli  plang!* 

<^  There  sat  in  the  corner  a  sergeant  old. 

Two  notaries  and  a  dragoon  bold. 

Who  cried  ^  Down  with  him !     The  cobbler  is  right ! 

Poland  earns  the  meeds  of  her  evil  might!* 

From  behind  the  stove  came 

An  old  squint-eyed  dame, 


1772 


CARL   MICHAEL   BELLMAN 

And  flung  at  the  harp 

Glass  broken  and  sharp; 
But  the  cobbler  —  pling  plingeli  plang  — 
Made  a  terrible  hole  in  my  neck  —  that  long! 
There  hast  thou  the  story  —  pling  plingeli  plang. 

**  O  righteous  world !     Now  I  ask  of  thee 
If  I  suffered  not  wrongly  ?  "     *<  Why,   certainly !  *> 
*<Was  I  not  innocent  ?^^     <<  Bless  you,  most  sure!* 
**  The  harp  rent  asunder,  my  nose  torn  and  sore, 
Twas  hard  treatment,  I  trow! 
Now  no  better  I  know 
Than  to  go  through  the  land 
With  my  harp  in  my  hand, 
Play  for  Bacchus  and  Venus  —  kling  klang  — 
With  masters  best  that  e'er  played  or  sang; 
Attend  me,  Apollo!  —  pling  plingeli  plang.* 


DRINK    OUT   THY   GLASS 

DRINK  out  thy  glass!     See,  on  thy  threshold,  nightly, 
Staying  his  sword,  stands  Death,  awaiting  thee. 
Be  not  alarmed;   the  grave-door,  opened  slightly. 
Closes  again ;   a  full  year  it  may  be 
Ere  thovi  art  dragged,  poor  sufferer,  to  the  grave. 
Pick  the  octave ! 
Tune  up  the  strings !     Sing  of  life  with  glee ! 

Golden's  the  hue  thy  dull,   wan  cheeks  are  showing; 

Shrunken's  thy  chest,  and  fiat  each  shoulder-blade. 
Give  me  thy  hand!     Each  dark  vein,  larger  growing, 

Is,   to  my  touch,   as  if  in  water  laid. 
Damp  are  these  hands;  stiff  are  these  veins  becoming. 
Pick  now,  and  strumming. 
Empty  thy  bottle !     Sing !  drink  unafraid. 


Skal,  then,  my  boy!     Old  Bacchus  sends  last  greeting; 

Freya's  farewell  receive  thou,  o'er  thy  bowl. 
Fast  in  her  praise  thy  thin  blood  flows,  repeating 

Its  old-time  force,    as  it  was  wont  to  roll. 
Sing,  read,  forget;   nay,  think  and  weep  while  thinking. 
Art  thoti  for  drinking 
Another  bottle  ?     Thou  art  dead  ?     No  Skal ! 


1772  a 

ARNOLD  BENNETT 

(1867-) 

BY    ALLAN    NEVINS 

jRNOLD  Bennett  will  be  remembered  as  the  novelist  of  the  Five 
Towns  —  as  chronicler  of  the  life  and  exponent  of  the  ideals  of 
a  hard-headed,  pushing,  materialistic,  and  spiritually  defi- 
cient people  during  the  last  half  of  the  long  Victorian  era.  He  has 
covered  a  large  canvas,  and  covered  it  industriously,  on  the  whole 
painstakingly,  and  with  great  insight  into  the  outward  aspect  of  the 
middle-class  existence  of  these  manufacturing  communities;  but  with 
vigor  rather  than  consummate  artistry  or  subtlety  of  interpretation. 
We  wonder  sometimes  why  the  novel  of  business  has  made  so  little 
headway  in  this  age  of  business.  Bennett,  through  his  training  and  his 
talent  for  what  is  loosely  called  ((realism,))  is  the  greatest  writer  in  this 
field,  and  by  working  hard  and  with  general  sincerity  he  has  scored  many 
commercial  and  several  artistic  successes.  He  has  but  an  ill-defined 
point  of  view:  he  is  a  writer  who  sees  the  dramatic  facets  of  human 
experience  in  the  mass,  whose  trained  observation  and  immense  memory 
enable  him  to  render  a  wealth  of  detail  in  human  action  and  surroundings 
with  never  a  slip,  and  who  is  content  to  set  down  what  contributes  to  the 
progress  of  his  narrative  and  characterization  with  only  the  slightest 
additions  of  a  personal  kind.  This  impersonal  mode  of  writing,  and  his 
share  in  the  worldly  shrewdness  of  the  Five  Towns,  have  perhaps  con- 
tributed to  his  recurrent  forgetfulness  of  the  highest  standards  of  art 
and  the  consequent  unevenness  of  his  work.  If  an  artist  would  not 
let  himself  knowingly  falter,  Bennett  is  sometimes  an  artist  and  some- 
times a  clever  craftsman. 

He  was  reared  in  circumstances  that  steeped  him  in  the  atmosphere 
of  the  society  he  was  to  describe.  Born  May  27th,  1867,  near  Hanley, 
which  in  turn  is  not  far  from  Birmingham,  he  had  the  five  towns  of  the 
great  Staffordshire  potteries  district — Hanley,  Tunstall,  Burslem,  Stoke- 
upon-Trent,  and  Longton — under  close  observation.  His  father  was  a 
solicitor,  and  he  was  educated  to  follow  the  same  calling.  He  was  first 
trained  at  Newcastle-under-Lyme,  at  the  Endowed  Middle  School,  the 
very  one  mentioned  in  (Clayhanger.)  He  matriculated  at  London 
University  at  about  eighteen,  gave  four  years  to  the  study  of  law  in  his 
father's  office,  and  in  1889  went  from  the  Five  Towns  to  London,  ((with 
no  definite  ambition  and  no  immediate  object  save  to  escape  from  the 
intellectual  and  artistic  environment  which  had  long  been  eAc^ssively 
irksome  to  me.))     He  earned  a  scanty  living  as  shorthand  clerk,  but  wo.<; 


1772  b  ARNOLD    BENNETT 

soon  promoted  to  the  preparation  of  bills  of  costs  for  taxation,  with  a 
salary  of  two  hundred  pounds  a  year.  From  this  niche  he  was  lifted 
by  his  ambition  and  the  remark  of  an  elder  leaving  the  ofifice:  ((You've 
no  business  being  here.  You  ought  to  be  doing  something  else.  If  I 
find  you  here  when  I  visit  town  next,  I  shall  look  upon  you  as  a  d — d 
fool.)) 

In  <The  Truth  about  an  Author)  Bennett  has  given  a  truthful  and 
hence  mildly  shocking  account  of  the  early  stages  of  his  career — to  1900, 
in  short;  shocking  because  his  career  has  been  so  shrewdly  practical,  so 
full  of  the  Five  Towns  desire  to  get  on  by  industry  and  proficiency,  so 
apparently  empty  of  the  ideals  with  which  we  associate  conscious  art. 
It  is  .undoubtedly  true  that  all  authorship  has  many  of  the  elements 
Bennett  here  describes  so  openly,  and  undoubtedly  true  that  Bennett  has 
said  nothing  of  secret  aims  that  were  probably  very  real  to  him.  He  tells 
how  in  the  Five  Towns  he  contributed  a  smart  column  to  a  local  paper, 
and  of  the  thrill  that  came  over  him  when  he  learned  that  he  was 
expected  to  continue  writing  while  his  grandfather  was  dying.  In 
London  he  collected  books,  assumed  the  air  of  an  authority  about  them, 
read  voraciously,  making  Turgenev,  the  brothers  Goncourt,  and  de 
Maupassant  his  gods,  and,  above  all,  served  an  apprenticeship  as  free 
lance.  He  won  a  prize  for  articles  in  a  ((popular  paper,))  had  a  story 
accepted  by  The  Yellow  Book,  and  in  general  labored  in  the  journalism 
which  he  describes  as  sending  out  an  article  and  receiving  it  back  the 
next  day  but  one.  About  the  year  1S93  these  articles  came  back  more 
rarely,  while  he  became  sub-editor —  later  editor —  of  the  magazine 
Woman.  His  fluency  growing,  he  contributed  regularly  to  the  Academy, 
became  a  dramatic  critic,  reviewed  one  or  more  books  a  day  with  just 
as  much  care  as  he  felt  his  remuneration  justified,  and  wrote  plays 
((because  I  wanted  money  in  heaps  and  I  wanted  advertisement  for  my 
books.))  He  wrote  his  first  novel  while  murmuring,  in  the  words  of 
Edmund  Kean,  ((I'm  doing  the  trick,))  and  finished  it  while  ((I  did  not 
yet  dare  to  call  myself  an  artist;  I  lacked  the  courage  to  believe  that  I 
had  the  sacred  fire.))  Under  the  title  of  (The  Man  from  the  North  > 
it  was  published  in  1898,  and  ushered  in  years  of  literary  activity  prolific 
enough  to  recall  Trollope.  In  1899,  Bennett  tells  us,  he  wrote  about 
230  articles  and  short  stories,  a  book  of  plays,  all  of  (Anna  of  the  Five 
Towns,)  the  greater  part  of  (Love  and  Life,)  and  part  of  '  The  Gates  of 
Wrath.)  Nearly  every  year  since,  whether  he  has  been  in  England  or 
France,  for  he  has  spent  much  time  at  Fontainebleau,  has  been  as 
fertile. 

Inevitably  in  ail  this  there  has  been  much  trash,  and  the  kindly 
among  Bennett's  analysts  will  pass  by  the  greater  part  of  his  output — 
he  him^cJ^  would  in  no  way  object  to  the  noun — in  silence.  Bennett, 
lixe  Hardy,  has  himself  classified  his  writings:   Novels,  Fantasias,  Short 


ARNOLD    BENNETT  1772  c 

Stories,  Belles  Lettres,  Dramas,  and  In  Collaboration.  The  future  will 
take  account  of  only  the  novels  and  short  stories,  and  of  only  a  portion 
of  these.  In  particular,  <The  Old  Wives'  Tale,)  the  trilogy  comprised 
in  (Clayhanger,)'  <Hilda  Lessways,)  and  <These  Twain,)  the  three 
volumes  of  short  stories,  (Tales  of  the  Five  Towns,)  <The  Grim  Smile 
of  the  Five  Towns,)  and  (The  Matador  of  the  Five  Towns,)  with  perhaps 
the  novel  <Anna  of  the  Five  Towns,)  contain  the  cream  of  his  work.  The 
remainder  in  fiction  is  of  value  to  the  critic  of  Bennett  chiefly  as  exhibiting 
more  clearly  than  this  best  part,  his  essential  faults  and  limitations  set 
in  sharp  contrast  to  his  virtues  and  powers — for  very  little  of  his  fiction 
is  wanting  in  considerable  merit  in  some  one  particular.  The  work  of 
Bennett  in  the  plays  and  belles  lettres,  by  which  is  meant  criticism, 
travel,  and  the  handbooks  on  some  of  the  personal  problems  of  life,  was 
probably  regarded  as  ephemeral  while  it  v/as  being  done. 

(The  Old  Wives'  Tale)  is  Bennett's  most  finished,  profound,  and 
deeply  truthful  work;  his  preoccupation  with  the  objective  i^  apparently 
as  great  as  elsewhere,  but  it  has  not  prevented  him  from  putting  a  real 
soul  into  his  narrative.  In  brief,  it  is  an  exhibition  of  the  progress  of 
two  girls  of  Bursley  (Burslem),  born  in  the  late  forties,  from  the  age  of 
fifteen  to  their  deaths;  being  an  attempt  to  parallel  and  better  Mau- 
passant's (Une  Vie.)  Sophia  Baines,  full  of  vitality  and  the  spirit  of 
adventure,  runs  away  to  London  and  France  with  a  man  whose  character 
is  indicated  by  the  fact  that  he  had  at  first  the  idea  of  seducing  and 
abandoning  her.  Realizing  that  her  life  is  ruined,  she  tries  to  recoup  by 
making  a  competence  out  of  an  English  pension  in  Paris,  with  the  hope 
of  returning  home  creditably.  Meanwhile '  her  sister  Constance,  a 
woman  of  sweetness  but  little  force  of  character,  has  married  a  respect- 
able Five  Towns  tradesman,  has  seen  him  die  of  overexertion,  has  trained 
a  son  who  has  some  talent  but  no  great  filial  affection,  and  has  fallen 
into  a  very  narrow  rut  indeed.  In  old  age  the  two  are  reunited. 
Sophia  tries  her  best  to  throw  Constance  out  of  some  of  her  ruts,  as  by 
carrying  her  away  from  her  old  house  to  a  hotel,  and  the  two  live  un- 
happily in  the  mutual  exhibition  of  the  crotchets  and  prejudices  they 
have  acquired  till,  Sophia  first  and  Constance  soon  after,  they  die.  The 
keynote  of  the  novel  is  disillusionment,  the  chief  impression  the  reader 
carries  away  is  of  the  remorselessness  of  time  and  decay;  while  there 
runs  through  it  the  same  irony  that  furnishes  the  theme  of  the  play 
( Milestones,)  the  irony  of  the  fact  that  all  youths  exhibit  an  impatience 
of  adult  conventions  and  discipline,  and  in  their  own  old  age  come  to 
show  the  same  impatience  of  the  heat  and  passion  of  youth.  It  is  not 
a  very  pleasant  book  anywhere,  in  some  passages  it  is  possible  to  trace 
a  faint  morbidity,  and  from  the  point  of  view  of  mere  craftsmanship, 
its  200,000  words  might  well  be  reduced.  But  it  is  unexcelled  among 
Bennett's  works  in  the  truthfulness  of  its  characterization,  the  interest 


I772d  ARNOLD    BENNETT 

excited  by  the  steady  march  of  the  story  through  the  years,  the  vigor  of 
the  style,  the  breadth  of  the  palette,  and  the  skill  with  which  in  the  chief 
personages  the  manners,  mind,  and  traditions  of  a  whole  society  are 
exhibited.  Impersonal  the  recital  is,  but  it  excites  pity,  and,  when  the 
author  wishes,  other  emotions,  as  only  rare  books  do;  while  its  construc- 
tive merit,  which  lies  in  the  selection  of  the  illuminating  passages  in  the 
lives  of  the  two  old  wives,  is  remarkable. 

In  the  <Clayhanger)  trilogy  the  Antasus-like  strength  that  Bennett 
gains  from  the  soil  of  his  Five  Towns  is  again  noteworthy.  The  first  two 
books  of  the  three  are  not  initial  and  sequential,  but  complementary. 
In  (Clayhanger)  we  are  invited  to  follow  the  career  of  the  son  of  a 
prosperous  Bursley  printer,  a  rather  tame  youth  but  capable  of  gripping 
the  reader's  attention,  from  the  period  when  his  secondary  schooling 
begins  to  his  marriage  with  Hilda  Lessways,  also  of  the  Five  Towns. 
The  genesis  of  his  character;  his  relations  with  a  father  who  has  seen 
enough  of  the  hard  side  of  life  to  make  him  a  little  jealous  of  his  son's 
advantages;  his  meeting  and  infatuation  with  Hilda;  his  abandonment 
by  her  just  when  his  love  for  her  seems  approaching  its  triumph;  his 
assumption  of  the  printing  business,  upon  his  father's  breakdown;  his 
reunion  with  Hilda — all  this  makes  a  narrative  of  strength,  variety,  and 
interest.  The  story  is  again  told  dispassionately  and  impersonally, 
and  though  from  the  general  point  of  view  of  Clayhanger,  never  by 
him.  There  are  moments  of  real  poignancy  in  the  narrative,  as  when 
the  elder  Clayhanger  finds  himself,  through  softening  of  the  brain, 
unable  to  cut  up  his  food,  and  watches  it  done  for  him  as  the  tears  roll 
down  his  face;  there  are  rrioments  of  high  dramatic  value,  as  when  Clay- 
hanger hears  the  thunderbolt  news  of  Hilda's  marriage  to  Cannon;  but 
the  greatest  merit  of  the  book,  as  of  <The  Old  Wives'  Tale,i  lies  in  the 
convincing  representation  of  phases  that  extend  over  years,  as  the  slow 
absorption  of  Clayhanger  by  the  printing  business.  A  hardly  secondary 
merit  is  the  faithful  yet  natural  rendering,  as  a  background,  of  the  body, 
mind,  and  heart  of  the  Five  Towns.  The  democracy,  the  enterprise, 
the  common  sense,  the  harshness  of  the  Five  Towns  are  established  by 
scores  of  petty  incidents  and  thousands  of  details.  Isolated,  provincial, 
aloof  in  all  but  an  industrial  way  from  the  ringing  grooves  of  change, 
they  offer  some  qualities  of  the  Victorian  atmosphere  in  perfection. 
They  cling  to  old  manners,  old  habits,  old  religions,  old  political  views, 
and  the  old  strictness  of  family  life,  with  curious  tenacity.  With  their 
local  pride  and  their  wealth  of  personal  idiosyncrasy  they  contradict  all 
that  we  usually  say  of  the  monotony  of  industrial  life.  The  careful 
painting-in  of  all  this  is  one  of  the  best  aspects  of  the  trilogy,  and  best 
of  all  in  the  first  book. 

^Hilda  Lessways)  covers  the  same  ground  as  ^Clayhanger)  so  far  as 
it  goes,  but  does  not  go  so  far  by  some  years.      With  characteristic  bold- 


ARNOLD    BENNETT  1772  e 

ness,  Bennett  has  recorded  many  of  the  incidents  of  the  earlier  book,  and 
in  many  cases  has  exactly  reproduced  the  dialogue  —  as  in  the  porch- 
meeting  of  Hilda  and  Clayhanger  in  the  rain.  Hilda  is  described  more 
sympathetically,  and  her  point  of  view  given  more  intimately  than  was 
Clayhanger's.  It  is  fully  explained  how  she  came  to  desert  her  lover, 
or  rather  to  renounce  him,  after  their  first  hours  together.  Her  strength 
of  character  under  the  trials  she  endured  with  the  bigamous  Cannon  is 
brought  forth;  and  i :;  all,  one  who  had  seemed  in  (Clayhanger)  eccentric, 
uneven,  and  a  little  harsh  appears  in  a  much  warmer  and  more  amiable 
light,  though  none  the  less  the  perplexing  and  capricious  character  she 
was  before.  In  (These  Twain  >  the  reactions  upon  each  other  of  this 
strangely  unlike  yet  well-suited  pair  are  described  in  the  most  difficult 
psychological  study  Bennett  has  yet  undertaken,  and  with  the  verisimili- 
tude of  which,  at  his  best,  he  is  master.  Clayhanger,  now  thirty-six, 
ensconces  himself  and  his  wife  in  a  comfortable  Bursley  suburb,  and 
settles  down  to  the  steady  life  of  an  estimable,  prosperous  citizen.  He 
has  his  own  convictions  about  everything,  and  for  the  most  part  they 
are  open,  manly,  honest,  and  simple;  Hilda  has  hers,  and  they  are  way- 
ward, unfair,  and  exasperatingly  cool.  The  marriage  is  a  success  because 
though  Clayhanger  is  under  no  illusion  as  to  his  wife's  faults,  and  resents 
her  perversity  and  occasional  unscrupulous  duplicity,  she  remains  to 
him  a  mysterious,  enchanting,  and  delightful  person,  with  whom  he  is 
permanently  in  love.  In  short,  she  ((manages))  him  in  spite  of  himself 
and  his  superior  virtues.  As  in  (The  Old  Wives'  Tale,)  the  point  of 
view  is  a  double  one,  but  we  see  a  great  deal  more  of  Clayhanger  than 
of  his  wife,  and  it  is  perhaps  for  this  reason  that  he  appears  in  so  much 
more  favorable  a  light.  The  book  affords  Bennett  much  the  same  op- 
portunity in  character  contrast  as  (The  Old  Wives'  Tale,)  with  room  for 
the  analysis  of  the  characteristically  masculine  and  characteristically 
feminine. 

In  each  of  the  trilogy  Bennett  achieves  his  main  ends  by  the  device 
of  piling  up  detail  until  it  becomes  impressive  and  overwhelming,  after  a 
method  perhaps  learned  from  the  Russians.  The  construction  is  more 
artful  than  most  readers  will  appreciate,  for  to  make  detail  interesting 
and  pertinent  and  keep  it  from  clogging  action  is  no  easy  task;  while 
Bennett  is  expert  in  the  use  of  episode  to  bring  to  expression  emotions 
that  have  been  long  smouldering.  The  story  in  (Hilda  Lessways)  ends 
where  it  should,  for  it  was  wise  to  leave  Hilda's  bleak  years  as  boarding- 
house  inmate  to  the  imagination.  In  (These  Twain)  the  stuff  of  the 
narrative  is  simply  the  bickerings  of  husband  and  wife,  the  adjustment 
of  Hilda  to  all  the  members  of  the  Clayhanger  family,  the  management 
of  the  servants,  and  the  relations  of  the  two  to  Five  Towns  society,  from 
Peartree  the  Methodist  minister  to  Breeze  the  bank  manager;  but  it  is 
skillfully  combined.      The  humor  of  the  book  appears  again  in  the  social 


I772£  ARNOLD    BENNETT 

observation  of  the  Five  Towns,  and  although  too  few  of  the  characters 
are  likable,  one,  Auntie  Hamps,  ((a  classic  example  of  widespread  messy 
idolatrous  eternal  domesticity,))  is  an  admirable  incarnation  of  all  the 
faults  and  solid  excellences  of  the  Victorian  age,  while  the  others  are 
lifelike  portraits.  The  three  volumes  thus  give  us  a  satisfying  picture 
of  Five  Towns  life  over  several  decades.  Their  chief  deficiency  is  the 
deficiency  of  Bennett's  work  as  a  whole:  its  want  of  genuine  feeling  and  of 
philosophical  insight  into  human  motives. 

Of  the  short  stories  we  can  only  note  that  they  are  uneven,  that  they 
lack  compression  but  otherwise  have  the  genuine  short  story  construc- 
tion, and  that  they  show  that  Bennett's  style  is  not  highly  adapted  to 
the  form,  in  that  he  has  little  sense  for  the  mot  juste  et  court.  (Anna  of 
the  Five  Towns)  has  distinction  but  is  structurally  imperfect;  <Buried 
Alive>  contains  more  of  satire  than  any  other  of  Bennett's  books;  and 
<Denry  the  Audacious)  has  won  popularity  by  its  vivacity,  high  spirits, 
and  humor,  but  exhibits  Bennett's  blindness  to  certain  moral  defects 
of  the  hero  in  a  distressing  way.  (Milestones,)  the  most  noteworthy  of 
the  plays,  done  in  collaboration,  attempts  with  some  success  to  show  the 
immutable  characteristics  of  youth  and  age  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion. Of  the  belles  lettres,  the  travel  sketches  are  impressionistic  and 
wordy,  and  the  little  books  on  such  problems  as  (How  to  Live  on 
Twenty-Four  Hours  a  Day!  show  Bennett's  desire  to  be  schoolmaster 
to  the  masses  and  his  unconquerable  common  sense,  but  have  no  high 
intellectual  .or  spiritual  message. 


THE   PROFESSIONAL  REVIEWER 

From  (The  Truth  about  an  Author.)     Copyright  by  the  George  H.  Doran  Com- 
pany and  reprinted  by  their  permission. 

THE  performances  of  the  expert  in  any  craft  will  surprise  and 
amaze  the  inexpert.  Come  with  me  into  my  study  and  I  will 
surprise  and  amaze  you.  Have  I  been  handling  novels  for 
bread-and-cheese  all  these  years  and  not  learnt  to  judge  them  by  any 
process  quicker  than  that  employed  by  you  who  merely  pick  up  a 
novel  for  relaxation  after  dinner?  Assuming  that  3'our  taste  is  fairly 
sound,  let  us  be  confronted  with  the  same  new  novel,  and  I  will  show 
you,  though  you  are  a  quick  reader,  that  I  can  anticipate  your  judg- 
ment of  that  novel  by  a  minimum  of  fifty-five  minutes.  The  title- 
page  —  that  conjunction  of  the  title,  the  name  of  the  author,  and  the 
name  of  the  publisher  —  speaks  to  me,  telling  me  all  sorts  of  things. 
The  very  chapter-readings  deliver  a  message  of  style.  The  narrative 
everywhere  discloses  to  me  the  merits  and  defects  of  the  writer;  no 


ARNOLD    BENNETT  I772g 

author  ever  lived  who  could  write  a  page  without  giving  himself  away. 
The  whole  book,  open  it  where  I  will,  is  murmurous  with  indications 
for  me.  In  the  case  of  nine  books  of  ten,  to  read  them  through  would 
be  not  a  work  of  supererogation  —  it  would  be  a  sinful  waste  of  time 
on  the  part  of  a  professional  reviewer.  The  majority  of  novels  —  and 
all  these  remarks  apply  only  to  novels  —  hold  no  surprise  for  the 
professional  reviewer.  He  can  foretell  them  as  the  nautical  almanac 
foretells  astronomical  phenomena.  The  customary  established  popu- 
lar author  seldom  or  never  deviates  from  his  appointed  track,  and  it 
is  the  customary  established  popular  author  upon  whom  chiefly  the 
reviewer  is  a  parasite.  New  authors  occasionally  cause  the  reviewer 
to  hesitate  in  his  swift  verdicts,  especially  when  the  verdict  is  inclined 
to  be  favorable.  Certain  publishers  (that  is  to  say,  their  ((readers))) 
have  a  knack  of  acquiring  new  authors  who  can  imitate  real  excellence 
in  an  astonishing  manner.  In  some  cases  the  reviewer  must  needs 
deliberately  ((get  into))  the  book,  in  order  not  to  be  deceived  by  appear- 
ances, in  order  to  decide  positively  whether  the  author  has  genuine 
imaginative  power,  and  if  so,  whether  that  power  is  capable  of  a 
sustained  effort.  But  these  difficult  instances  are  rare.  There 
remains  the  work  of  the  true  artist,  the  work  that  the  reviewer  himself 
admires  and  enjoys:  say  one  book  in  fifty,  or  one  in  a  hundred.  The 
reviewer  reads  that  through. 

Brief  reflection  will  convince  any  one  that  it  would  be  economically 
impossible  for  the  reviewer  to  fulfill  this  extraordinary  behest  of  the 
man  of  the  street  to  read  every  book  through.  Take  your  London 
morning  paper,  and  observ^e  the  column  devoted  to  fiction  of  the  day. 
It  comprises  some  fifteen  hundred  words,  and  the  reviewer  receives, 
if  he  is  well  paid,  three  guineas  for  it.  Five  novels  are  discussed. 
Those  novels  will  amount  to  sixteen  hundred  pages  of  printed  matter. 
Reading  at  the  rate  of  eight  words  a  second,  the  reviewer  would 
accomplish  two  pages  a  minute,  and  sixteen  hundred  pages  in  thirteen 
hours  and  twenty  minutes.  Add  an  hour  and  forty  minutes  for  the 
composition,  and  we  have  fifteen  hours,  or  two  days'  work.  Do  you 
imagine  that  the  reviewer  of  a  London  morning  paper  is  going  to  hire 
out  his  immortal  soul,  his  experience,  his  mere  skill,  at  the  rate  of 
thirty-one  and  sixpence  per  da}^  on  irregular  jobs?  Scarcely.  He  will 
earn  his  three  guineas  inside  three  hours,  and  it  will  be  well  and  truly 
earned.  As  a  journeyman  author,  with  the  ability  and  inclination  to 
turn  my  pen  in  any  direction  at  request,  I  long  ago  established  a  rule 
never  to  work  for  less  than  ten  shillings  an  hour  on  piece-work.  If  an 
editor  commissioned  an  article,  he  received  from  me  as  much  fun- 


I772h  ARNOLD    BENNETT 

damental  brain-power  and  as  much  time  as  the  article  demanded  —  up 
to  the  Hmit  of  his  pay  in  terms  of  hours  at  ten  shilHngs  apiece.  But 
each  year  I  raise  my  price  per  hour.  Of  course,  when  I  am  working 
on  my  own  initiative,  for  the  sole  advancement  of  my  artistic  reputa- 
tion, I  ignore  finance  and  think  of  glory  alone.  It  cannot,  however,  be 
too  clearly  understood  that  the  professional  author,  the  man  who 
depends  entirely  on  his  pen  for  the  continuance  of  breath,  and  whose 
income  is  at  the  mercy  of  an  illness  or  a  headache,  is  eternally  com- 
promising between  glory  and  something  more  edible  and  warmer  at 
nights.  He  labors  in  the  first  place  for  food,  shelter,  tailors,  a  woman, 
European  travel,  horses,  stalls  at  the  opera,  good  cigars,  ambrosial 
evenings  in  restaurants;  and  he  gives  glory  the  best  chance  he  can.  I 
am  not  speaking  of  geniuses  with  a  mania  for  posterity;  I  am  speaking 
of  hi.mian  beings. 

A   CHILDREN'S   PARTY 

From  (The  Old  Wives'  Tale)  by  Arnold  Bennett.     Copyright  by  the  Geo.  H.  Doran 

Co.  and  reprinted  by  their  permission. 

THE  drawing-room  was  full  of  visitors,  in  frocks  of  ceremony.  The 
old  drawing-room,  but  newly  and  massively  arranged  with  the 
finest  Victorian  furniture  from  dead  Aunt  Harriet's  house  at 
Axe;  two  ((Canterbury s,))  a  large  bookcase,  a  splendid  scintillant  table 
solid  beyond  lifting,  intricately  tortured  chairs  and  armchairs!  The 
original  furniture  of  the  drawing-room  was  now  down  in  the  parlor, 
making  it  grand.  All  the  house  breathed  opulence;  it  was  gorged  with 
quiet,  restrained  expensiveness;  the  least  considerable  objects,  in  the 
most  m.odcst  corners,  were  what  Mrs.  Baines  would  have  termed 
((good.))  Constance  and  Samuel  had  half  of  all  Atmt  Harriet's  money 
and  half  of  Mrs.  Baines's;  the  other  half  was  accumulating  for  a 
hypothetical  Sophia,  Mr.  Critchlow  being  the  trustee.  The  business 
continued  to  flourish.  People  knew  that  Samuel  Povcy  was  buying 
houses.  Yet  Samuel  and  Constance  had  not  made  friends;  they  had 
not,  in  the  Five  Towns  phrase,  ((branched  out  socially,))  though  they 
had  very  meetly  branched  out  on  subscription  lists.  They  kept  them- 
selves to  themselves  (emphasizing  the  preposition).  These  guests 
were  not  their  guests;  they  were  the  guests  of  Cyril. 

He  had  been  named  Samuel  because  Constance  would  have  him 
named  after  his  father,  and  Cyril  because  his  father  secretly  despised 
the  name  of  Samuel;  and  he  was  called  Cyril;  ((Master  Cyril,))  by  Amy, 
definite  successor  to  Maggie.     His  mother's  thoughts  were  on  Cyril  as 


ARNOLD    BENNETT  1772  1 

long  as  she  was  awake.  His  father,  when  not  planning  Cyril's  welfare, 
was  earning  money  whose  unique  object  could  be  nothing  but  Cyril's 
welfare.  Cyril  was  the  pivot  of  the  house;  every  desire  ended  some- 
where in  Cyril.  The  shop  existed  now  solely  for  him.  And  those 
houses  that  Samuel  bought  by  private  treaty,  or  with  a  shamefaced 
air  at  auctions  —  somehow  they  were  aimed  at  C\'ril.  Samuel  and 
Constance  had  ceased  to  be  self -justifying  beings;  they  never  thought 
of  themselves  save  as  the  parents  of  Cyril. 

They  realized  this  by  no  means  fully.  Had  they  been  accused  of 
monomania  they  would  have  smiled  the  smile  of  people  confident  in 
their  common  sense  and  their  mental  balance.  Nevertheless,  they 
were  monomaniacs.  Instinctively  they  concealed  the  fact  as  much  as 
possible.  They  never  admitted  it  even  to  themselves.  Samuel, 
indeed,  would  often  say: — ((That  child  is  not  everybody.  That  child 
must  be  kept  in  his  place.))  Constance  was  always  teaching  him 
consideration  for  his  father  as  the  most  important  person  in  the  house- 
hold. Samuel  was  always  teaching  him  consideration  for  his  mother 
as  the  most  important  person  in  the  household.  Nothing  was  left 
undone  to  convince  him  that  he  was  a  cipher,  a  nonentity,  who  ought 
to  be  very  glad  to  be  alive.  But  he  knew  all  about  his  importance. 
He  knew  that  the  entire  town  was  his.  He  knew  that'his  parents  were 
deceiving  themselves.  Even  when  he  was  punished  he  well  knew  that 
it  was  because  he  was  so  important.  He  never  imparted  any  portion 
of  this  knowledge  to  his  parents ;  a  primeval  wisdom  prompted  him  to 
retain  it  strictly  in  his  own  bosom. 

He  was  four  and  a  half  years  old,  dark,  like  his  father;  handsome 
like  his  aunt,  and  tall  for  his  age;  not  one  of  his  features  resembled  a 
feature  of  his  mother's,  but  sometimes  he  ((had  her  look.))  From  the 
capricious  production  of  inarticulate  sounds,  and  then  a  few  monosyl- 
lables that  described  concrete  things  and  obvious  desires,  he  had 
gradually  acquired  an  astonishing  idiomatic  command  over  the  most 
difficult  of  Teutonic  languages;  there  was  nothing  that  he  could  not 
say.  He  could  walk  and  run,  was  full  of  exact  knowledge  about  God, 
and  entertained  no  doubt  concerning  the  special  partiality  of  a  minor 
deity  called  Jesus  towards  himself. 

Now,  this  party  was  his  mother's  invention  and  scheme.  His 
father,  after  flouting  it,  had  said  that  if  it  was  to  be  done  at  all,  it 
should  be  done  well,  and  had  brought  to  the  doing  all  his  organizing 
skill.  Cyril  had  accepted  it  at  first  —  merely  accepted  it;  but,  as  the 
day  approached  and  the  preparations  increased  in  magnitude,  he  had 
com.e  to  look  on  it  with  favor,  then  with  enthusiasm.     His  father 


1772]  ARNOLD    BENNETT 

having  taken  him  to  Daniel  Povey's  opposite,  to  choose  cakes,  he  had 
shown,  by  his  solemn  and  fastidious  waverings,  how  seriously  he 
regarded  the  affair. 

Of  course  it  had  to  occur  on  a  Thursday  afternoon.  The  season 
was  summer,  suitable  for  pale  and  fragile  toilettes.  And  the  eight 
children  who  sat  round  Aunt  Harriet's  great  table  glittered  like  the 
sun.  Not  Constance's  specially  provided  napkins  could  hide  that 
wealth  and  profusion  of  white  lace  and  stitchery.  Never  in  after-life 
aie  the  genteel  children  of  the  Five  Towns  so  lichly  clad  as  at  the  age 
of  four  or  five  years.  Weeks  of  labor,  thousands  of  cubic  feet  of 
gas,  whole  nights  stolen  from  repose,  eyesight,  and  general  health,  will 
disappear  into  the  manufacture  of  a  single  frock  that  accidental  jam 
may  ruin  in  ten  seconds.  Thus  it  was  in  those  old  days;  and  thus  it  is 
to-day.  Cyril's  guests  ranged  in  years  from  four  to  six;  they  were 
chiefly  older  than  their  host;  this  was  a  pity,  it  impaired  his  importance ; 
but  up  to  four  years  a  child's  sense  of  propriet}',  even  of  common 
decency,  is  altogether  too  unreliable  for  a  respectable  party. 

Round  about  the  outskirts  of  the  table  were  the  elders,  ladies  the 
majority;  they  also  in  their  best,  for  they  had  to  meet  each  other. 
Constance  displa3'ed  a  new  dress,  of  crimson  silk;  after  having  mourned 
for  her  mother  she  had  definitely  abandoned  the  black  which,  by 
reason  of  her  duties  in  the  shop,  she  had  constantly  worn  from  the  age 
of  sixteen  to  within  a  few  months  of  Cyril's  birth;  she  never  went  into 
the  shop  now,  except  casually,  on  brief  visits  of  inspection.  She  was 
still  fat ;  the  destroyer  of  her  figure  sat  at  the  head  of  the  table.  Samuel 
kept  close  to  her;  he  was  the  only  male,  until  Mr.  Critchlow  astonish- 
ingly arrived;  among  the  company  Mr.  Critchlow  had  a  grand-niece. 
Samuel,  if  not  in  his  best,  was  certainly  not  in  his  everyday  suit.  With 
his  large  frilled  shirt-front,  and  small  black  tie,  and  his  little  black  beard 
and  dark  face  over  that,  he  looked  very  nervous  and  self-conscious. 
He  had  not  the  habit  of  entertaining.  Nor  had  Constance;  but  her 
benevolence  ever  bubbling  up  to  the  calm  surface  of  her  personality 
made  self -consciousness  impossible  for  her.  Miss  Insull  was  also 
present,  in  shop-black,  «to  help.))  Lastly  there  was  Amy,  now  as  the 
years  passed  slowly  assuming  the  character  of  a  faithful  retainer, 
though  she  was  only  twenty-three.  An  ugly,  abrupt,  downright  girl, 
with  convenient  notions  of  pleasure!  For  she  would  rise  early  and 
retire  late  in  order  to  contrive  an  hour  to  go  out  with  Master  Cyril; 
and  to  be  allowed  to  put  Master  Cyril  to  bed  was,  rcall}^  her  highest 
bliss. 

All  these  ciders  were  continually  inserting  arms  into  the  fringe  of 


ARNOLD    BENNETT  1772  k 

fluffy  children  that  surrounded  the  heaped  table ;  removing  dangerous 
spoons  out  of  cups  into  saucers,  replacing  plates,  passing  cakes,  spread- 
ing jam,  whispering  consolations,  explanations,  and  sage  counsel. 
Mr.  Critchlow,  snow-white  now  but  unbent,  remarked  that  there  was 
«a  pretty  cackle,))  and  he  sniffed.  Although  the  window  was  slightly 
open,  the  air  was  heavy  with  the  natural  human  odor  which  young 
children  transpire.  More  than  one  mother,  pressing  her  nose  into  a 
lacy  mass,  to  whisper,  inhaled  that  pleasant  perfume  with  a  voluptuous 
thrill. 

Cyril,  while  attending  steadily  to  the  demands  of  his  body,  was  in 
a  mood  which  approached  the  ideal.  Proud  and  radiant,  he  combined 
urbanity  with  a  certain  fine  condescension.  His  bright  eyes,  and  his 
manner  of  scraping  up  jam  with  a  spoon,  said:  «I  am  the  king  of  this 
party.  This  party  is  solely  in  my  honor.  I  know  that.  We  all 
know  it.  vStill,  I  will  pretend  that  we  are  equals,  you  and  I.))  He 
talked  about  his  picture-books  to  a  young  woman  on  his  right  named 
Jennie,  aged  fovir,  pale,  pretty,  the  belle  in  fact,  and  Mr.  Critchlow's 
grand-niece.  The  boy's  attractiveness  was  indisputable;  he  could 
put  on  quite  an  aristocratic  air.  It  was  the  most  delicious  sight  to  see 
them,  Cyril  and  Jennie,  so  soft  and  deHcate,  so  infantile  on  their  piles 
of  cushions  and  books,  with  their  white  socks  and  black  shoes  dangling 
far  distant  from  the  carpet;  and  yet  so  old,  so  self-contained!  And 
they  were  merely  an  epitome  of  the  whole  table.  The  whole  table 
was  bathed  in  the  charm  and  mystery  of  young  years,  of  helpless 
fragility,  gentle  forms,  timid  elegance,  unshamed  instincts,  and  waking 
souls.  Constance  and  Samuel  were  very  satisfied;  full  of  praise  for 
other  people's  children,  but  with  the  reserve  that  of  course  Cyril  was 
hors  concours.  They  both  really  did  believe,  at  that  moment,  that 
Cyril  was,  in  some  subtle  way  which  they  felt  but  could  not  define, 
superior  to  all  other  infants. 

Someone,  some  officioiis  relative  of  a  visitor,  began  to  pass  a 
certain  cake,  which  had  brown  walls,  a  roof  of  cocoanut  icing,  and  a 
yellow  body  studded  with  crimson  globules.  Not  a  conspicuously 
gorgeous  cake,  not  a  cake  to  which  a  catholic  child  would  be  likely  to 
attach  particular  importance;  a  good,  average  cake!  Who  could  have 
guessed  that  it  stood,  in  Cyril's  esteem,  as  the  cake  of  cakes?  He  had 
insisted  on  his  father  buying  it  at  Cousin  Daniel's,  and  perhaps  Samuel 
ought  to  have  divined  that  for  Cyril  that  cake  was  the  gleam  that  an 
ardent  spirit  would  follow  through  the  wilderness.  Samuel,  however, 
was  not  a  careful  observer,  and  seriously  lacked  imagination.  Con- 
stance knew  only  that  Cyril  had  mentioned  the  cake  once  or  twice. 


1772  1  ARNOLD    BENNETT 

Now  by  the  hazard  of  destiny  that  cake  found  much  favor,  helped 
into  popularity  as  it  was  by  the  blundering  officious  relative  who,  not 
dreaming  wliat  volcano  she  was  treading  on,  urged  its  merits  with 
simpering  enthusiasm.  One  boy  took  two  slices,  a  slice  in  each  hand ; 
he  happened  to  be  the  visitor  of  whom  the  cake-distributor  was  a 
relative,  and  she  protested;  she  expressed  the  shock  she  suffered. 
Whereupon  both  Constance  and  Samuel  sprang  forward  and  swore 
with  angelic  smiles  that  nothing  could  be  more  perfect  than  the 
propriety  of  that  dear  little  fellow  taking  two  slices  of  that  cake.  It 
was  this  hullaballoo  that  drew  Cyril's  attention  to  the  evanescence  of 
tlie  cake  of  cakes.  His  face  at  once  changed  from  calm  pride  to  a 
dreadful  anxiety.  His  eyes  bulged  out.  His  tiny  mouth  grew  and 
grew,  like  a  mouth  in  a  nightmare.  He  was  no  longer  human;  he  was 
a  cake-eating  tiger  being  balked  of  his  prey.  Nobody  noticed  him. 
The  officious  fool  of  a  woman  persuaded  Jennie  to  take  the  last  slice  of 
the  cake,  which  was  quite  a  thin  slice. 

Then  everyone  simultaneously  noticed  Cyril,  for  he  gave  a  yell. 
It  was  not  the  cry  of  a  despairing  soul  who  sees  his  beautiful  iridescent 
dream  shattered  at  his- feet;  it  was  the  cry  of  the  strong,  masterfiil 
spirit,  furious.  He  turned  upon  Jennie,  sobbing,  and  snatched  at  her 
cake.  Unaccustomed  to  such  behavior  from  hosts,  and  being  besides 
a  haughty  put-you-in-your-place  beauty  of  the  future,  Jennie  defended 
her  cake.  After  all,  it  was  not  she  who  had  taken  two  slices  at  once. 
Cyril  hit  her  in  the  eye,  and  then  crammed  most  of  the  slice  of  cake  into 
his  enormous  mouth.  He  could  not  swallow  it,  nor  even  masticate  it, 
for  his  throat  was  rigid  and  tight.  So  the  cake  projected  from  his  red 
lips,  and  big  tears  watered  it.  The  most  awful  mess  you  can  conceive ! 
Jennie  wept  loudly,  and  one  or  two  others  joined  in  her  sympathy, 
but  the  rest  went  on  eating  tranquilly,  unmoved  by  the  horror  which 
transfixed  their  elders. 

A  host  to  snatch  food  from  a  guest !  A  host  to  strike  a  guest !  A 
gentleman  to  strike  a  lady ! 

THE   FIVE   TOWNS 

From   <Whom  God  Hath  Joined.)     Copyright  by  the  George  H.  Doran  Co.  and 

reprinted  by  their  permission. 

WHEN  I  was  young  the  road  leading  out  of  the  heart  of  the  Five 
Towns  uj)  to  Toft  End  was  nothing  to  me  save  a  steep  path 
toward  fresh  air  and  far  horizons;  but  now  that  I  have  lived 
a  little  it  seems  the  very  avenue  to  a  loving  comprehension  of  human 


ARNOLD    BENNETT  1772  m 

nature,  and  I  climb  it  with  a  strange,  overpowering,  mystical  sense  of 
the  wonder  of  existence. 

Bleakridge,  a  suburb  of  Bursley,  oldest  of  the  Five  Towns,  lies 
conspicuously  on  a  hill  between  Bursley  and  Hanbridge;  but  Toft  End, 
which  may  be  called  a  suburb  of  Bleakridge,  overtops  Bleakiidge  itself 
by  hundreds  of  feet.  Immediately  you  have  crossed  the  railway,  the 
street,  with  its  narrow  brick  pavement  and  cottage-rows  on  one  side, 
and  smoke-discolored  meadows  on  the  other,  begins  to  rise  abruptly, 
and  you  feel  that  you  are  leaving  things  behind,  quitting  the  world 
below,  and  gaining  a  truer  perspective.  You  feel,  too,  that  you  are 
entering  a  mountain  village,  where  primitive  manners  have  survived. 
There  are  small  potbanks  in  Toft  End  into  which  machinery  has  never 
penetrated;  the  shafts  of  the  coal  mines  look  as  simple  as  wells;  and 
there  even  remain,  in  a  condition  of  habitable  decay,  a  few  of  those 
Georgian  mansions  which  earthenware  manufacturers  built  for  them- 
selves a  century  ago  and  which  in  other  parts  of  the  Five  Towns  have 
either  disappeared  or  been  transformed  into  offices  and  warehouses. 
The  women  at  the  doors  of  the  serried  narrow  cottages,  each  one  of 
which  is  a  little  higher  than  its  neighbor,  stare  at  you  for  a  stranger  and 
ask  why  you  walk  so  slowly  and  why  you  gaze  so  long  at  the  glimpses 
of  Bursley  on  the  north  and  Hanbridge  on  the  south  ^  those  cities  of 
the  murky  plain  mapping  themselves  out  beneath.  And  suddenly 
you  come  plump  into  a  new  board  school,  planned  with  magnificent 
modern  disregard  of  space,  and  all  red  with  terra  cotta  and  roof  tiles; 
plants  bloom  in  its  windows,  for  the  powers  down  at  Bursley  have 
decreed  that  the  eyes  of  the  children  shall  rest  on  beauty;  you  reflect 
that  once  the  children  were  whipped  from  their  beds  at  three  in  the 
morning  to  work  till  eight  at  night,  and  you  would  become  sentimental 
over  those  flowers  did  you  not  remember  that  all  states  of  progress  are 
equally  worthy,  and  that  a  terra  cotta  board  school  is  not  a  final 
expression  of  the  eternal  purpose,  though  at  a  distance  it  may  resemble 
one.  Close  by  is  a  cramped  and  tiny  building  of  aged  brown  brick, 
with  no  asphalt  yard  and  no  system  of  ventilation  and  no  wide  windows 
and  no  blossoms:  a  deplorable  erection,  surely!  Carved  over  this 
modest  stone  portal,  in  old-fashioned  lettering,  is  the  legend  ((Sunday 
School  1806.))  Oh  wistful,  unhealthy  little  temple  of  a  shaken  creed, 
fruit  of  heaven  knows  what  tremendous  effort  up  there  in  that  village, 
the  terra  cotta  board  school  is  not  greater  than  thou,  and  it  shall  not 
be  more  honored! 

And  so  you  pass  onward,  higher  and  higher,  by  cottages  new  and 
old,  by  an  odd  piece  of  a  farmstead  with  authentic  ducks  on  its  pond, 


1772  n  ARNOLD    BENNETT 

by  the  ancient  highway  from  Hanbridge  to  Moorthorne,  by  a  new 
terrace  of  small  villas  with  a  sticky  grocer's  shop  for  the  sale  of  soap 
and  perhaps  stamps,  by  Nonconformist  chapels  but  not  by  a  church, 
until  you  arrive  at  the  Foaming  Quart  Inn,  which  is  the  highest 
licensed  house  in  the  Five  Towns.  A  couple  of  hundred  yards  more, 
and  you  are  at  the  summit,  in  the  centre  of  a  triangular  country  which 
on  geological  maps  is  colored  black  to  indicate  coal.  Turn  then  and 
look.  To  the  east  is  the  wild  gray-green  moorland  dotted  with  mining 
villages  whose  steeples  are  wreathed  in  smoke  and  fire.  West  and 
north  and  south  are  the  Five  Towns  —  Bursley  and  Turnhill  to  the 
north  —  Hanbridge,  Knype,  and  distant  Longshaw  to  the  south  — 
Hanbridge  and  Bursley  uniting  their  arms  in  the  west.  Here  they 
have  breathed  for  a  thousand  years;  and  here  to-day  they  pant  in  the 
fever  of  a  quickened  evolution,  with  all  their  vast  apparatus  of  mayors 
and  aldermen  and  chains  of  office,  their  gas  and  their  electricity,  their 
swift  transport,  their  daily  paper,  their  religions,  their  fierce  pleasures, 
their  vices,  their  passionate  sports,  and  their  secret  ideals!  Bursley 
Town  Hall  is  lighting  its  clock  —  the  gold  angel  over  it  is  no  longer 
visible  —  and  the  clock  of  Hanbridge  Old  Church  answers;  far  off  the 
blue  arc  lamps  of  Knype  shunting-yard  flicker  into  being;  all  round  the 
horizon,  and  in  the  deepest  valley  at  Cauldon,  the  yellow  fires  of  fur- 
naces grow  brighter  in  the  first  oncoming  of  the  dusk.  The  immense 
congeries  of  streets  and  squares,  of  little  houses  and  great  halls  and 
manufactories,  of  church  spires  and  proud  smoking  chimneys  and 
chapel  towers,  mingle  together  into  one  wondrous  organism  that 
stretches  and  rolls  unevenly  away  for  miles  in  the  grimy  mists  of  its 
own  endless  panting.  Railway  stations,  institutes,  temples,  colleges, 
graveyards,  parks,  baths,  workshops,  theatres,  concerts,  cafes,  pawn- 
shops, emporiums,  private  bars,  unmentioned  haunts,  courts  of  justice, 
banks,  clubs,  libraries,  thrift  societies,  auction-rooms,  telephone 
exchanges,  post-offices,  marriage  registries,  municipal  buildings  — 
what  are  they,  as  they  undulate  below  you  in  their  complex  unity, 
but  the  natural,  beautiful,  inevitable  manifestation  of  the  indestructi- 
ble Force  that  is  within  you?  If  this  prospect  is  not  beautiful  under 
the  high  and  darkened  sky,  then  flowers  are  not  beautiful,  nor  the  ways 
of  animals!  If  anything  that  happens  in  this  arena  of  activity  seems 
to  you  to  need  apologizing  for,  or  slurring  over,  or  concealment,  then 
you  have  climbed  to  the  top  of  Toft  End  in  vain! 


»773 


JEREMY    BENTHAM 

(1748-1832) 

jENTHAM,  whose  name  rightly  stands  sponsor  for  the  titilitarian 
theory  of  morals  in  legislation,  thotigh  not  its  originator, 
was  a  mighty  and  miique  figure  in  many  ways.  His  child- 
hood reminds  us  of  that  of  his  disciple  John  Stuart  Mill  in  its  pre- 
cocity; but  fortunately  for  him,  life  had  more  juice  in  it  for  young 
Bentham  than  it  had  for  Mill.  In  his  maturity  and  old  age  he  was 
widely  recognized  as  a  commanding  authority,  notwithstanding  some 
startling  absurdities. 

He  was  born  in  London,  February  15th, 
1747-8;  the  child  of  an  attorney  of  ample 
means,  who  was  proud  of  the  youth,  and 
did  not  hesitate  to  show  him  off.  In  his 
fourth  year  he  began  the  study  of  Latin, 
and  a  year  later  was  known  in  his  father's 
circle  as  ^<  the  philosopher.'*  At  six  or  seven 
he  began  the  study  of  French.  He  was 
then  sent  to  Westminster  school,  where  he 
must  have  had  a  rather  uncomfortable  time ; 
for  he  was  small  in  body,  sensitive  and  deli- 
cate, and  not  fond  of  boyish  sports.  He 
had  a  much  happier  life  at  the  houses  of 
his  grandmothers  at  Barking  and  at  Brown- 
ing Hill,  where  much  of  his  childhood  was  spent.  His  reminiscences 
of  these  days,  as  related  to  his  biographer,  are  full  of  charm.  He 
was  a  great  reader  and  a  great  student;  and  going  to  Oxford  early, 
was  only  sixteen  when  he  took  his  degree. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  he  did  not  bear  away  with  him  a  high 
appreciation  of  the  benefits  which  he  owed  to  his  alma  mater. 
"Mendacity  and  insincerity  —  in  these  I  found  the  effects,  the  sure 
and  only  sure  effects,  of  an  English  university  education.  >'  He  wrote 
a  Latin  ode  on  the  death  of  George  II.,  which  was  much  praised.  In 
later  years  he  himself  said  of  it,  "  It  was  a  mediocre  performance  on 
a  trumpery  subject,  written  by  a  miserable  child. '* 

On  taking  his  degree  he  entered  at  Lincoln's  Inn,  but  he  never 
made  a  success  in  the  practice  of  the  law.  He  hated  litigation,  and 
his  mind  became  immediately  absorbed  in  the  study  and  development 
of   the   principles   of   legislation    and   jurisprudence,  and  this  became 


Jeremy  Bentham 


1774  JEREMY  BENTHAM 

the  business  of  his  life.  He  had  an  intense  antipathy  to  Blackstone, 
under  whom  he  had  sat  at  Oxford;  and  in  1776  he  pubhshed  anony- 
mously a  severe  criticism  of  his  work,  under  the  title  *  Fragments  on 
Government,  or  a  Commentary  on  the  Commentaries,*  which  was  at 
first  attributed  to  Lord  Mansfield,  Lord  Camden,  and  others.  His 
identification  as  the  author  of  the  ^  Fragments  *  brought  him  into 
relations  with  Lord  Shelburne,  who  invited  him  to  Bowood,  where  he 
made  a  long  and  happy  visit,  of  which  bright  and  gossipy  letters  tell 
the  story.  Here  he  worked  on  his  *■  Introduction  to  the  Principles  of 
Morals  and  Legislation,*  in  which  he  developed  his  utilitarian  theory, 
and  here  he  fell  in  love  with  a  young  lady  who  failed  to  respond  to 
his  wishes.     Writing  in  1827,  he  says:  — 

«I  am  alive,  more  than  two  months  advanced  in  my  eightieth  year,  more 
lively  than  when  you  presented  me  in  ceremony  with  a  flower  in  Green 
Lane.  Since  that  day  not  a  single  one  has  passed,  not  to  speak  of  nights, 
in  which   you   have   not   engrossed   more   of  my   thoughts    than   I   could   have 

wished.     .     .     .     Embrace  ;   though  it  is  for  me,  as  it  is  by  you,  she  will 

not  be  severe,  nor  refuse  her  lips  to  me  as  she  did  her  hand,  at  a  time  per- 
haps not  yet  forgotten  by  her,  any  more  than  by  me.» 

Bentham  wrote  voluminously  on  morals,  on  rewards  and  punish- 
ments, on  the  poor  laws,  on  education,  on  law  reform,  on  the  codifi- 
cation of  laws,  on  special  legislative  measures,  on  a  vast  variety  of 
subjects.  His  style,  at  first  simple  and  direct,  became  turgid, 
involved,  and  obscure.  He  was  in  the  habit  of  beginning  the  same 
work  independently  many  times,  and  usually  drove  several  horses 
abreast.  He  was  very  severe  in  his  strictures  upon  persons  in 
authority,  and  upon  current  notions;  and  was  constantly  being 
warned  that  if  he  should  publish  such  or  such  a  work  he  would 
surely  be  prosecuted.  Numerous  books  were  therefore  not  published 
until  many  years  after  they  were  written.  His  literary  style  became 
so  prolix  and  unintelligible  that  his  disciples  —  Dumont,  Mill,  and 
others  —  came  to  his  rescue,  and  disentangled  and  prepared  for  the 
press  his  innumerable  pamphlets,  full  of  suggestiveness  and  teeming 
with  projects  of  reform  more  or  less  completely  realized  since.  His 
publications  include  more  than  seventy  titles,  and  he  left  a  vast 
accumulation  of  manuscript,  much  of  which  has  never  been  read. 

He  had  a  wide  circle  of  acquaintances,  by  whom  he  was  held  in 
high  honor,  and  his  correspondence  with  the  leading  men  of  his 
time  was  constant  and  important.  In  his  later  years  he  was  a 
pugnacious  writer,  but  he  was  on  intimate  and  jovial  terms  with  his 
friends.  In  18 14  he  removed  to  Ford  Abbey,  near  Chard,  and  there 
wrote  ^Chrestomathea,*  a  collection  of  papers  on  the  principles  of 
education,  in  which   he   laid  stress   upon   the  value  of  instruction  in 


JEREMY  BENTHAM  lyy^ 

science,  as  against  the  excessive  predominance  of  Greek  and  Latin. 
In  1823,  in  conjunction  with  James  Mill  and  others,  he  established 
the  Westminster  Review,  but  he  did  not  himself  contribute  largely 
to  it.  He  continued,  however,  to  the  end  of  his  life  to  write  on  his 
favorite  topics. 

Robert  Dale  Owen,  in  his  autobiography,  gives  the  following 
description  of  a  visit  to  Bentham  during  the  philosopher's  later 
years: — 

« I  preserve  a  most  agreeable  recollection  of  that  grand  old  face,  beaming 
with  benignity  and  intelligence,  and  occasionally  with  a  touch  of  humor 
which  I  did  not  expect.  ...  I  do  not  remember  to  have  met  any  one  of 
his  age  [seventy-eight]  who  seemed  to  have  more  complete  possession  of  his 
faculties,  bodily  and  mental;  and  this  surprised  me  the  more  because  I  knew 
that  in  his  childhood  he  had  been  a  feeble-limbed,  frail  boy.  ...  I  found 
him,  having  overpassed  by  nearly  a  decade  the  allotted  threescore  years  and 
ten,  with  step  as  active  and  eye  as  bright  and  conversation  as  vivacious  as 
one  expects  in  a  hale  man  of  fifty. 

"  I  shall  never  forget  my  surprise  when  we  were  ushered  by  the  venerable 
philosopher  into  his  dining-room.  An  apartment  of  good  size,  it  was  occupied 
by  a  platform  about  two  feet  high,  and  which  filled  the  whole  room,  except  a 
passageway  some  three  or  four  feet  wide,  which  had  been  left  so  that  one 
could  pass  all  round  it.  Upon  this  platform  stood  the  dinner-table  and  chairs, 
with  room  enough  for  the  servants  to  wait  upon  us.  Around  the  head  of  the 
table  was  a  huge  screen,  to  protect  the  old  man,  I  suppose,  against  the 
draught  from  the  doors.     .     .     . 

«When  another  half -hour  had  passed,  he  touched  the  bell  again.  This 
time  his  order  to  the  servant  startled  me:  — 

«  <  John,  my  night-cap !  > 

«I  rose  to  go,  and  one  or  two  others  did  the  same;  Neal  sat  still.  <Ah!> 
said  Bentham,  as  he  drew  a  black  silk  night-cap  over  his  spare  gray  hair, 
fyou  think  that's  a  hint  to  go.  Not  a  bit  of  it.  Sit  down!  I'll  tell  you  when 
I  am  tired.     I'm  going  to  vibrate  a  little;   that  assists  digestion,  too.> 

«And  with  that  he  descended  into  the  trench-like  passage,  of  which  I  have 
spoken,  and  commenced  walking  briskly  back  and  forth,  his  head  nearly  on  a 
level  with  ours,  as  we  sat.  Of  course  we  all  turned  toward  him.  For  full 
half  an  hour,  as  be  walked,  did  he  continue  to  pour  forth  such  a  witty  and 
eloquent  invective  against  kings,  priests,  and  their  retainers,  as  I  have  seldom 
listened  to.  Then  he  returned  to  the  head  of  the  table  and  kept  up  the  con- 
versation, without  flagging,  till  midnight  ere  he  dismissed  us. 

«His  parting  words  to  me  were  characteristic:  —  <God  bless  you, — if  there 
be  such  a  being;   and  at  all  events,  my  young  friend,  take  care  of  yourself.*^ 

His  weak  childhood  had  been  followed  by  a  healthy  and  robust 
old  age.  But  he  wore  out  at  last,  and  died  Jime  6,  1832,  character- 
istically leaving  his  body  to  be  dissected  for  the  benefit  of  science. 
The  greater  part  of  his  published  writings  were  collected  by  Sir  John 
Bowring,  his  executor,  and  issued  in  nine  large  volumes  in  1843. 


iyy6  JEREMY  BENTHAM 

OF   THE   PRINCIPLE   OF   UTILITY 

From  <An  Introduction  to  the  Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation  > 

NATURE  has  placed  mankind  under  the  governance  of  two 
sovereign  masters,  pain  and  pleasure.  It  is  for  them  alone 
to  point  out  what  we  ought  to  do,  as  well  as  to  determine 
what  we  shall  do.  On  the  one  hand  the  standard  of  right  and 
wrong,  on  the  other  the  chain  of  causes  and  effects,  are  fastened 
to  their  throne.  They  govern  us  in  all  we  do,  in  all  we  say,  in 
all  we  think;  every  effort  we  can  make  to  throw  off  our  subjec- 
tion will  serve  but  to  demonstrate  and  confirm  it.  In  words  a 
man  may  pretend  to  abjure  their  empire ;  but  in  reality  he  will 
remain  subject  to  it  all  the  while.  The  principle  of  utility  recog- 
nizes this  subjection,  and  assumes  it  for  the  fotmdation  of  that 
system,  the  object  of  which  is  to  rear  the  fabric  of  felicity  by 
the  hands  of  reason  and  of  law.  Systems  which  attempt  to  ques- 
tion it  deal  in  sounds  instead  of  sense,  in  caprice  instead  of 
reason,  in  darkness  instead  of  light. 

Bvit  enough  of  metaphor  and  declamation:  it  is  not  by  such 
means  that  moral  science  is  to  be  improved. 

The  principle  of  utility  is  the  foundation  of  the  present  work; 
it  will  be  proper,  therefore,  at  the  outset  to  give  an  explicit  and 
determinate  account  of  what  is  meant  by  it.  By  the  principle 
of  utility  is  meant  that  principle  which  approves  or  disapproves 
of  every  action  whatsoever,  according  to  the  tendency  which  it 
appears  to  have  to  augment  or  diminish  the  happiness  of  the 
party  whose  interest  is  in  question;  or,  what  is  the  same  thing 
in  other  words,  to  promote  or  to  oppose  that  happiness.  I  say  of 
every  action  whatsoever;  and  therefore  not  only  of  every  action 
of  a  private  individual,  but  of  every  measure  of  government. 

By  utility  is  meant  that  property  in  any  object  whereby  it 
tends  to  produce  benefit,  advantage,  pleasure,  good,  or  happiness 
(all  this  in  the  present  case  comes  to  the  same  thing),  or  (what 
comes  again  to  the  same  thing)  to  prevent  the  happening  of 
mischief,  pain,  evil,  or  unhappiness  to  the  party  whose  interest 
is  considered:  if  that  party  be  the  community  in  general,  then 
the  happiness  of  the  community;  if  a  particular  individual,  then 
the  happiness  of  that  individual. 

The  interest  of  the  community  is  one  of  the  most  general 
expressions  that  can  occur  in  the  phraseology  of  morals:  no  won- 
der that  the  meaning  of  it  is  often  lost.     When  it  has  a  meaning, 


JEREMY    BENTHAM  1 7 77 

it  is  this:  The  community  is  a  fictitious  body,  composed  of  the 
individual  persons  who  are  considered  as  constituting-,  as  it  were, 
its  Members.  The  interest  of  the  commimity,  then,  is  what?  The 
sum  of  the  interests  of  the  several  members  who  compose  it. 

It  is  vain  to  talk  of  the  interest  of  the  community,  without 
understanding  what  is  the  interest  of  the  individual.  A  thing  is 
said  to  promote  the  interest,  or  to  be  for  the  interest,  of  an  indi- 
vidual, when  it  tends  to  add  to  the  sum  total  of  his  pleasures: 
or,  what  comes  to  the  same  thing,  to  diminish  the  sum  total  of 
his  pains. 

An  action,  then,  may  be  said  to  be  conformable  to  the  prin- 
ciple of  utilitv,  or  for  shortness'  sake  to  utility  (meaning  with 
respect  to  the  community  at  large),  when  the  tendency  it  has  to 
augment  the  happiness  of  the  community  is  greater  than  any  it 
has  to  diminish  it. 

A  measure  of  government  (which  is  but  a  particular  kind  of 
action,  performed  by  a  particular  person  or  persons)  may  be  said 
to  be  conformable  to  or  dictated  by  the  principle  of  utility,  when 
in  like  manner  the  tendency  which  it  has  to  augment  the  hap- 
piness of  the  community  is  greater  than  any  which  it  has  to 
diminish  it. 

When  an  action,  or  in  particular  a  measure  of  government,  is 
supposed  by  a  man  to  be  conformable  to  the  principle  of  utility, 
it  may  be  convenient  for  the  purposes  of  discourse  to  imagine 
a  kind  of  law  or  dictate  called  a  law  or  dictate  of  utility,  and  to 
speak  of  the  action  in  question  as  being  conformable  to  such 
law  or  dictate. 

A  man  may  be  said  to  be  a  partisan  of  the  principle  of  utility, 
when  the  approbation  or  disapprobation  he  annexes  to  any  action, 
or  to  any  measure,  is  determined  by  and  proportioned  to  the 
tendency  which  he  conceives  it  to  have  to  augment  or  to  dimin- 
ish the  happiness  of  the  community;  or  in  other  words,  to  its 
conformity  or  unconformity  to  the  laws  or  dictates  of  utility. 

Of  an  action  that  is  conformable  to  the  principle  of  utihty, 
one  may  always  say  either  that  it  is  one  that  ought  to  be  done, 
or  at  least  that  it  is  not  one  that  ought  not  to  be  done.  One 
may  say  also  that  it  is  right  it  should  be  done,  at  least  that  it 
is  not  wrong  it  should  be  done ;  that  it  is  a  right  action,  at  least 
that  it  is  not  a  wrong  action.  When  thus  interpreted,  the  words 
ought,  and  rigJit  and  wrong,  and  others  of  that  stamp,  have  a 
meaning;  when  otherwise,  they  have  none, 
in — 112 


17^8  JEREMY   BENTHAM 

REMINISCENCES   OF   CHILDHOOD 

DURING  my  visits  to  Barking,  I  used  to  be  my  grandmother's 
bedfellow.  The  dinner  hour  being  as  early  as  two  o'clock, 
she  had  a  regular  supper,  which  was  served  up  in  her  own 
sleeping-room;  and  immediately  after  finishing  it,  she  went  to 
bed.  Of  her  supper  I  was  not  permitted  to  partake,  nor  was  the 
privation  a  matter  of  much  regret.  I  had  what  I  preferred  —  a 
portion  of  gooseberry  pie;  hers  was  a  scrag  of  mutton,  boiled 
with  parsley  and  butter.     I  do  not  remember  any  variety. 

My  amusements  consisted  in  building  houses  with  old  cards, 
and  sometimes  playing  at  ^  Beat  the  knave  out  of  doors  *  with 
my  grandmother.  My  time  of  going  to  bed  was  perhaps  an 
hour  before  hers;  but  by  way  of  preparation,  I  never  failed  to 
receive  her  blessing.  Previous  to  the  ceremony,  I  underwent  a 
catechetical  examination,  of  which  one  of  the  questions  was,  ^*  Who 
were  the  children  that  were  saved  in  the  fiery  furnace  ? "  Answer, 
"  Shadrach,  Meshach,  and  Abednego.  **  But  as  the  examination 
frequently  got  no  farther,  the  word  Abednego  got  associated  in 
my  mind  with  very  agreeable  ideas,  and  it  ran  through  my  ears 
like  **  Shadrach,  Meshach,  and  To-bed-we-go,^^  in  a  sort  of  pleasant 
confusion,  which  is  not  yet  removed.  As  I  grew  in  years,  I 
became  a  fit  receptacle  .for  some  of  my  grandmother's  communi- 
cations, among  which  the  state  of  her  family  and  the  days  of  her 
youth  were  most  prominent. 

There  hung  on  the  wall,  perpetually  in  view,  a  sampler,  the 
produce  of  the  industry  and  ingenuity  of  her  mother  or  her 
grandmother,  of  which  the  subject-matter  was  the  most  important 
of  all  theologico-human  incidents,  the  fall  of  man  in  Paradise. 
There  was  Adam  —  there  was  Eve  —  and  there  was  the  serpent. 
In  these  there  was  much  to  interest  and  amuse  me.  One  thing 
alone  puzzled  me ;  it  was  the  forbidden  fruit.  The  size  was 
enormous.  It  was  larger  than  that  species  of  the  genus  Oran- 
geum  which  goes  by  the  name  of  *'  the  forbidden  fruit  **  in  some 
of  our  West  India  settlements.  Its  size  was  not  less  than  that 
of  the  outer  shell  of  a  cocoanut.  All  the  rest  of  the  objects 
were  as  usual  in  piano;  this  was  in  alto,  indeed  in  altissinio 
rilievo.  What  to  make  of  it,  at  a  time  when  my  mind  was 
unable  to  distinguish  fictions  from  realities,  I  knew  not.  The 
recollection  is  strong  in  me  of  the  mystery  it  seemed  to  be.  My 
grandmother  promised    me    the    sampler    after    her    death    as    a 


JEREMY  BENTHAM 


1779 


legacy,  and  the  promise  was  no  small  gratification;  but  the  prom- 
ise, with  many  other  promises  of  jewels  and  gold  coins,  was  pro- 
ductive of  nothing  but  disappointment.  Her  death  took  place 
when  I  was  at  Oxford.  My  father  went  down;  and  without  con- 
sulting me,  or  giving  the  slightest  intimation  of  his  intention,  let 
the  house,  and  sold  to  the  tenant  almost  everything  that  was  in 
it.  It  was  doing  as  he  was  wont  to  do,  notwithstanding  his 
undoubted  affection  for  me.  In  the  same  way  he  sold  the  estate 
he  had  given  to  me  as  a  provision  on  the  occasion  of  his  second 
marriage.  In  the  mass  went  some  music-books  which  I  had  bor- 
rowed of  Mrs.  Browne.  Not  long  after,  she  desired  them  to  be 
returned.  I  stood  before  her  like  a  defenseless  culprit,  conscious 
of  my  inability  to  make  restitution;  and  at  the  same  time,  such 
was  my  state  of  mental  weakness  that  I  knew  not  what  to  say 
for  apology  or  defense. 

My  grandmother's  mother  was  a  matron,  I  was  told,  of  high 
respectability  and  corresponding  piety;  well-informed  and  strong- 
minded.  She  was  distinguished,  however;  for  while  other  matrons 
of  her  age  and  quality  had  seen  many  a  ghost,  she  had  seen 
but  one.  She  was  in  this  particular  on  a  level  with  the  learned 
lecturer,  afterwards  judge,  the  commentator  Blackstone.  But  she 
was  heretical,  and  her  belief  bordered  on  Unitarianism.  And  by 
the  way,  this  subject  of  ghosts  has  been  among  the  torments  of 
my  life.  Even  now,  when  sixty  or  seventy  years  have  passed 
over  my  head  since  my  boyhood  received  the  impression  which 
my  grandmother  gave  it,  though  my  judgment  is  wholly  free,  my 
imagination  is  not  wholly  so.  My  infirmity  was  not  unknown  to 
the  servants.  It  was  a  permanent  source  of  amusement  to  ply 
me  with  horrible  phantoms  in  all  imaginable  shapes.  Under  the 
pagan  dispensation,  every  object  a  man  could  set  his  eyes  on 
had  been  the  seat  of  some  pleasant  adventure.  At  Barking,  in 
the  almost  solitude  of  which  so  large  a  portion  of  my  life  was 
passed,  every  spot  that  could  be  made  by  any  means  to  answer 
the  purpose  was  the  abode  of  some  spectre  or  group  of  spectres. 
So  dexterous  was  the  invention  of  those  who  worked  upon  my 
apprehensions,  that  they  managed  to  transform  a  real  into  a  fic- 
titious being.  His  name  was  PalctJiorp;  and  Palethorp,  in  my 
vocabulary,  was  synonymoiis  with  hobgoblin.  The  origin  of 
these  horrors  was  this:  — 

My  father's  house  was  a  short  half-mile  distant  from  the  prin« 
cipai   part  of  the  town,  from  that  part  where   was  situated  the 


1780  JEREMY  BENTHAM 

mansion  of  the  lord  of  the  manor,  Sir  Crisp  Gascoigne.  One 
morning  the  coachman  and  the  footman  took  a  conjunct  walk  to 
a  public-house  kept  by  a  man  of  the  name  Palethorp;  they  took 
me  with  them:  it  was  before  I  was  breeched.  They  called  for  a 
pot  of  beer;  took  each  of  them  a  sip,  and  handed  the  pot  to  me. 
On  their  requisition,  I  took  another;  and  when  about  to  depart, 
the  amount  was  called  for.  The  two  servants  paid  their  quota, 
and  I  was  called  on  for  mine.  Nemo  'dat  quod  non  Jiabet  —  this 
maxim,  to  my  no  small  vexation,  I  was  compelled  to  exemplify. 
Mr.  Palethorp,  the  landlord,  had  a  visage  harsh  and  ill-favored, 
and  he  insisted  on  my  discharging  my  debt.  At  this  very  early 
age,  without  having  put  in  for  my  share  of  the  gifts  of  fortune, 
I  found  myself  in  the  state  of  an  insolvent  debtor.  The  demand 
harassed  me  so  mercilessly  that  I  could  hold  out  no  longer:  the 
door  being  open,  I  took  to  my  heels;  and  as  the  way  was  too 
plain  to  be  missed,  I  ran  home  as  fast  as  they  could  carry  me. 
The  scene  of  the  terrors  of  Mr.  Palethorp' s  name  and  visitation, 
in  pursuit  of  me,  was  the  country-house  at  Barking;  but  neither 
was  the  town-house  free  from  them;  for  in  those  terrors,  the 
servants  possessed  an  instrument  by  which  it  was  in  their  power 
at  any  time  to  get  rid  of  my  presence.  Level  with  the  kitchen  — 
level  with  the  landing-place  in  which  the  staircase  took  its  com- 
mencement—  were  the  usual  offices.  When  my  company  became 
troublesome,  a  sure  and  continually  repeated  means  of  exoner- 
ating themselves  from  it  was  for  the  footman  to  repair  to  the 
adjoining  subterraneous  apartments,  invest  his  shoulders  with 
some  strong  covering,  and  concealing  his  countenance,  stalk  in 
with  a  hollow,  menacing,  and  inarticulate  tone.  Lest  that  should 
not  be  sufficient,  the  servants  had,  stuck  by  the  fireplace,  the 
portraiture  of  a  hobgoblin,  to  which  they  had  given  the  name  of 
Palethorp.  For  some  years  I  was  in  the  condition  of  poor  Dr. 
Priestley,  on  whose  bodily  frame  another  name, .  too  awful  to  be 
mentioned,  used  to  produce  a  sensation  more  than  mental. 


JEREMY   BENTHAM  1781 

LETTER   FROM   BOWOOD   TO   GEORGE  WILSON   {I'jSx) 

Sunday,   12  o'clock. 

WHERE  shall  I  begin? — Let  me  see  —  The  first  place,  by 
common  right,  to  the  ladies.  The  ideas  I  brought  with 
me  respecting  the  female  part  of  this  family  are  turned 
quite  topsy-turvy,  and  unfortunately  they  are  not  yet  cleared  up. 
I  had  expected  to  find  in  Lady  Shelbume  a  Lady  Louisa  Fitz- 
patrick,  sister  of  an  Earl  of  Ossory,  whom  I  remember  at  school; 
instead  of  her,  I  find  a  lady  who  has  for  her  sister  a  Miss  Caro- 
line V :   is   not   this   the   maid   of   honor,   the    sister  to  Lady 

G ?  the  lady  who  was  fond  of  Lord  C ,  and  of  whom  he 

was  fond  ?  and  whom  he  quitted  for  an  heiress  and  a  pair  of 
horns  ?  Be  they  who  they  may,  the  one  is  loveliest  of  matrons, 
the  other  of  virgins:  they  have  both  of  them  more  than  I  could 
wish  of  reserve,  but  it  is  a  reserve  of  modesty  rather  than  of 
pride. 

The  quadrupeds,  whom  you  know  I  love  next,  consist  of  a 
child  of  a  year  old,  a  tiger,  a  spaniel  formerly  attached  to  Lady 
Shelburne  —  at  present  to  my  Lord  —  besides  four  plebeian  cats 
who  are  taken  no  notice  of,  horses,  etc.,  and  a  wild  boar  who  is 
sent  off  on  a  matrimonial  expedition  to  the  farm.  The  four  first 
I  have  commenced  a  friendship  with,  especially  the  first  of  all, 
to  whom  I  am  body-coachman  extraordinary  en  titre  d' office: 
Henry,  (for  that  is  his  narne)  [the  present  Lord  Lansdowne] 
for  such  an  animal,  has  the  most  thinking  countenance  I  ever 
saw;  being  very  clean,  I  can  keep  him  without  disgust  and  even 
with  pleasure,  especially  after  having  been  rewarded,  as  I  have 
just  now,  for  my  attention  to  him,  by  a  pair  of  the  sweetest 
smiles  imaginable  from  his  mamma  and  aunt.  As  Providence 
hath  ordered  it,  they  both  play  on  the  harpsichord  and  at  chess, 
I  am  flattered  with  the  hopes  of  engaging  with  them,  before 
long,  either  in  war  or  harmony:  not  to-day — because,  whether 
you  know  it  or  not,  it  is  Sunday;  I  know  it,  having  been  pay- 
ing my  devotions  —  our  church,  the  hall  —  our  minister,  a  sleek 
young  parson,  the  curate  of  the  parish  —  our  saints,  a  naked 
Mercury,  an  Apollo  in  the  same  dress,  and  a  Venus  de*  Medi- 
cis  —  our  congregation,  the  two  ladies,  Captain  Blankett,  and 
your  humble  servant,  upon  the  carpet  by  the  minister  —  below, 
the  domestics,  superior  is  et  inferior  is  ordinis.  Among  the  former 
I  was  concerned  to  see  poor  Mathews,  the  librarian,  who,  I  could 


iyg2  JEREMY   BENTHAM 

not  help  thinking,  had  as  good  a  title  to  be  upon  the  carpet  as 
myself. 

Of  Lord  Fitzmaurice  I  know  nothing,  but  from  his  bust  and 
letters:  the  first  bespeaks  him  a  handsome  youth,  the  latter  an 
ingenious  one.  He  is  not  sixteen,  and  already  he  writes  better 
than  his  father.  He  is  under  the  care  of  a  Mr.  Jervis,  a  dis- 
senting minister,  who  has  had  charge  of  him  since  he  was  six 
years  old.  He  has  never  been  at  any  public  school  of  education. 
He  has  now  for  a  considerable  time  been  traveling  about  the 
kingdom,  that  he  may  know  something  of  his  own  country  before 
he  goes  to  others,  and  be  out  of  the  way  of  adiilation. 

I  am  interrupted  —  adieu!  /e  reste  a  V ordinaire  procJiain. 


FRAGMENT  OF  A  LETTER  TO  LORD  LANSDOWNE  (1790) 

IT  WAS  iising  me  very  ill,  that  it  was,  to  get  upon  stilts  as  you 
did,  and  resolve  not  to  be  angry  with  me,  after  all  the  pains 
I  had  taken  to  make  you  so.  You  have  been  angry,  let  me 
tell  you,  with  people  as  little  worth  it  before  now;  and  your 
being  so  niggardly  of  it  in  my  instance,  may  be  added  to  the 
account  of  your  injustice.  I  see  you  go  upon  the  old  Christian 
principle  of  heaping  coals  of  fire  upon  people's  heads,  which  is 
the  highest  refinement  upon  vengeance.  I  see,  moreover,  that 
according  to  your  system  of  cosmogony,  the  difference  is  but 
accidental  between  the  race  of  kings  and  that  of  the  first  Baron 
of  Lixmore:  that  ex-lawyers  come  like  other  men  from  Adam, 
and  ex-ministers  from  somebody  who  started  up  out  of  the 
ground  before  him,  in  some  more  elevated  part  of  the  country. 

To  lower  these  pretensions,  it  would  be  serving  you  right,  if 
I  were  to  tell  you  that  I  was  not  half  so  angry  as  I  appeared 
to  be;  that,  therefore,  according  to  the  countryman's  rule,  you 
have  not  so  much  the  advantage  over  me  as  you  may  think  you 
have:  that  the  real  object  of  what  anger  I  really  felt  was  rather 
the  situation  in  which  I  found  myself  than  you  or  anybody;  but 
that,  as  none  but  a  madman  would  go  to  quarrel  with  a  non- 
entity called  a  situation,  it  was  necessary  for  me  to  look  out  for 
somebody  who,  somehow  or  other,  was  connected  with  it. 


BERANGER 


1783 


JEAN-PIERRE   DE   BERANGER 

(1780-1857) 

BY   ALCEE   FORTIER 

ERANGER,  like  Hugo,  has  commemorated  the  date  of  his  birth, 
but  their  verses  are  very  different.  Hugo's  poem  is  lofty 
in  style,  beginning  — 

Ce  siecle  avait  deux  ans!    Rome  remplagait  Sparte, 
Deja  Napoleon  pergait  sous  Bonaparte, 
Et  du  premier  consul  deja,  par  maint  endroit, 
Le  front  de  I'empereur  brisait  le  masque  etroit.» 

(This  century  was  two  years  old;   Rome  displaced  Sparta, 
Napoleon  already  was  visible  in  Bonaparte, 
And  the  narrow  mask  of  the  First  Consul,  in  many  places, 
Was  already  pierced  by  the  forehead  of  the  Emperor.) 

Beranger's  verses  have  less  force,  but  are  charming  in  their  sim- 
plicity :  — 

«Dans  ce  Paris  plein  d'or  et  de  misere, 
En  I'an  du  Christ  mil  sept  cent  quatre-vingt, 
Chez  un  tailleur,  mon  pauvre  et  vieux  grand-pere, 
Moi,  nouveau-ne,  sachais  ce  qui  m'advint.'* 

(In  this  Paris  full  of  gold  and  misery. 

In  the  year  of  Christ  one  thousand  seven  hundred  and  eighty, 

At  the  house  of  a  tailor,  my  grandfather  poor  and  old, 

I,  a  new-born  child,  knew  what  happened  to  me.) 

Authors  of  the  eighteenth  and  the  nineteenth  centuries  are  more 
subjective  in  their  writings  than  those  of  the  seventeenth,  whose 
characters  can  rarely  be  known  from  their  works.  A  glance  at  the 
life  and  surroundings  of  Beranger  will  show  their  influence  on  his 
genius. 

Beranger's  mother  was  abandoned  by  her  husband  shortly  after 
her  marriage,  and  her  child  was  born  at  the  house  of  her  father,  the 
old  tailor  referred  to  in  the  song  <The  Tailor  and  the  Fairy.  >  She 
troubled  herself  little  about  the  boy,  and  he  was  forsaken  in  his 
childhood.  Beranger  tells  us  that  he  does  not  know  how  he  learned 
to  read.  In  the  beginning  of  the  year  1789  he  was  sent  to  a  school 
in  the  Faubourg  Saint-Antoine,  and  there,  mounted  on  the  roof  of 
a  house,   he    saw   the    capture    of   the    Bastille    on   the    14th   of  July. 


jy84  JEAN-PIERRE   DE   BERANGER 

This  event  made  a  great  impression  on  him,  and  may  have  laid 
the  foundations  of  his  republican  principles.  When  he  was  nine  and 
a  half  his  father  sent  him  to  one  of  his  sisters,  an  innkeeper  at 
Peronne,  that  town  in  the  north  of  France  famous  for  the  interview 
in  1468  between  Louis  XL  and  Charles  the  Bold,  when  the  fox,  put 
himself  in  the  power  of  the  lion,  as  related  so  vividly  in  <  Quentin 
Durward.  * 

Beranger's  aunt  was  very  kind  to  him.  At  Peronne  he  went  to 
a  free  primary  school  founded  by  Ballue  de  Bellenglise,  where  the 
students  governed  themselves,  electing  their  mayor,  their  judges,  and 
their  justices  of  the  peace.  Beranger  was  president  of  a  republican 
club  of  boys,  and  was  called  upon  several  times  to  address  members 
of  the  Convention  who  passed  through  Peronne.  His  aunt  was  an 
ardent  republican,  and  he  was  deeply  moved  by  the  invasion  of 
France  in  1792.  He  heard  with  delight  of  the  capture  of  Toulon  in 
1793  ^i^d  of  Bonaparte's  exploits,  conceiving  a  great  admiration  for 
the  extraordinary  man  who  was  just  beginning  his  military  career. 
At  the  age  of  fifteen  Beranger  returned  to  Paris,  where  his  father 
had  established  a  kind  of  banking  house.  The  boy  had  previously 
followed  different  trades,  and  had  been  for  two  years  with  a  pub- 
lishing house  as  a  printer's  apprentice.  There  he  learned  spelling 
and  the  rules  of  French  prosody.  He  began  to  write  verse  when 
he  was  twelve  or  thirteen,  but  he  had  a  strange  idea  of  prosody. 
In  order  to  get  lines  of  the  same  length  he  wrote  his  words  between 
two  parallel  lines  traced  from  the  top  to  the  bottom  of  the  page. 
His  system  of  versification  seemed  to  be  correct  when  applied  to  the 
Alexandrine  verse  of  Racine;  but  when  he  saw  the  fables  of  La 
Fontaine,  in* which  the  lines  are  very  irregular,  he  began  to  distrust 
his  prosody. 

Beranger  became  a  skillful  financier,  and  was  very  useful  to  his 
father  in  his  business.  When  the  banker  failed  the  young  man  was 
thrown  into  great  distress.  He  now  had  ample  opportunity  to  become 
familiar  with  the  garret,  of  which  he  has  sung  so  well.  In  1804  he 
applied  for  help  to  Lucien  Bonaparte,  and  received  from  Napoleon's 
brother  his  own  fee  as  member  of  the  Institute.  He  obtained  shortly 
afterwards  a  position  in  a  bureau  of  the  University.  Having  a 
weak  constitution  and  defective  sight,  he  avoided  the  conscription. 
He  was  however  all  his  life  a  trvie  patriot,  with  republican  instincts; 
and  he  says  that  he  never  liked  Voltaire,  because  that  celebrated 
writer  unjustly  preferred  foreigners  and  vilified  Joan  of  Arc,  "  the 
true  patriotic  divinity,  who  from  my  childhood  was  the  object  of  my 
worship.*^  He  had  approved  of  the  eighteenth  of  Brumaire :  for  "my 
soul,^^  says  he,  <<has  always  vibrated  with  that  of  the  people  as  when 
I   was   nineteen    years   old;'^   and   the   great   majority   of   the  French 


JEAN-PIERRE   DE   BERANGER  1 785 

people  in  1799  wished  to  see  Bonaparte  assume  power  and  govern 
with  a  firm  hand.  In  18 13  Beranger  wrote  <  The  King  of  Yvetot,> 
a  pleasing  and  amusing  satire  on  Napoleon's  reign.  What  a  contrast 
between  the  despotic  emperor  and  ruthless  warrior,  and  the  simple 
king  whose  crown  is  a  nightcap  and  whose  chief  delight  is  his  bottle 
of  wine!  The  song  circulated  widely  in  manuscript  form,  and  the 
author  soon  became  popular.  He  made  the  acquaintance  of  Desau- 
giers  and  became  a  member  of  the  Caveau.  Concerning  this  joyous 
literary  society  M.  Anatole  France  says,  in  his  <  Vie  Litteraire,*  that 
the  first  Caveau  was  founded  in  1729  by  Gallet,  Piron,  Crebillon 
fils,  Colle,  and  Panard.  They  used  to  meet  at  Laudelle  the  tavern- 
keeper's.  The  second  Caveau  was  inaugurated  in  1759  by  Marmontel, 
Suard,  Lanoue,  and  Brissy,  and  lasted  until  the  Revolution.  In  1806 
Armand  Gouffe  and  Capelle  established  the  modern  Caveau,  of  which 
Desaugiers  was  president.  The  members  met  at  Balaine's  restaurant. 
In  1834  the  society  was  reorganized  at  Champlanc's  restaurant.  The 
members  wrote  and  published  songs  and  sang  them  after  dinner. 
<<The  Caveau,*  says  M.  France,  <<is  the  French  Academy  of  song,* 
and  as  such  has  some  dignity.  The  same  is  true  of  the  Lice,  while 
the  Chat  Noir  is  most  fiti  de  sihle. 

■  To  understand  Beranger's  songs  and  to  excuse  them  somewhat, 
we  must  remember  that  the  French  always  delighted  in  witty  songs 
and  tales,  and  pardoned  the  immorality  of  the  works  on  account  of 
the  wit  and  humor.  This  is  what  is  called  l' esprit  gaulois,  and  is 
seen  principally  in  old  French  poetry,  in  the  fabliaux,  the  farces,  and 
<  Le  Roman  de  Renart.*  Moliere  had  much  of  this,  as  also  had  La 
Fontaine  and  Voltaire,  and  Beranger's  wildest  songs  appear  mild  and 
innocent  when  compared  with  those  of  the  Chat  Noir.  In  his  joyous 
songs  he  continues  the  traditions  of  the  farces  and  fabliaux  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  and  in  his  political  songs  he  uses  wit  and  satire  just 
as  in  the  sottises  of  the  time  of  Louis  XII. 

Beranger's  first  volume  of  songs  appeared  at  the  beginning  of  the 
second  Restoration;  and  although  it  was  hostile  to  the  Bourbons,  the 
author  was  not  prosecuted.  In  1821,  when  his  second  volume  was 
published,  he  resigned  his  position  as  clerk  at  the  University,  and 
was  brought  to  trial  for  having  written  immoral  and  seditious  songs. 
He  was  condemned,  after  exciting  scenes  in  court,  to  three  months' 
imprisonment  and  a  fine  of  five  hundred  francs,  and  in  1828  to  nine 
months'  imprisonment  and  a  fine  of  ten  thousand  francs,  which  was 
paid  by  public  subscription. 

No  doubt  he  contributed  to  the  Revolution  of  July,  1830;  but 
although  he  was  a  republican,  he  favored  the  monarchy  of  Louis 
Philippe,  saying  that  "  it  was  a  plank  to  cross  over  the  gutter,  a 
preparation    for    the    republic*      The    king   wished    to    see    him    and 


1786  JEAN-PIERRE   DE   BfiRANGER 

thank  him,  but  B^ranger  replied  that  <*  he  was  too  old  to  make  new 
acquaintances.*'  He  was  invited  to  apply  for  a  seat  in  the  French 
Academy,  and  refused  that  honor  as  he  had  refused  political  honors 
and  positions.  He  said  that  he  <<  wished  to  be  nothing*';  and  when 
in  1848  he  was  elected  to  the  Constitutional  Assembly,  he  resigned 
his  seat  almost  immediately.  He  has  been  accused  of  affectation,  and 
of  exaggeration  in  his  disinterestedness;  but  he  was  naturally  timid 
in  public,  and  preferred  to  exert  an  influence  over  his  countrymen 
by  his  songs  rather  than  by  his  voice  in  public  assemblies. 

Beranger  was  kind  and  generous,  and  ever  ready  to  help  all  who 
applied  to  him.  He  had  a  pension  given  to  Rouget  de  I'lsle,  the 
famous  author  of  the  *  Marseillaise,'  who  was  reduced  to  poverty, 
and  in  1835  he  took  into  his  house  his  good  aunt  from  Peronne,  and 
gave  hospitality  also  to  his  friend  Mile.  Judith  Frere.  In  1834  he 
sold  all  his  works  to  his  publisher,  Perrotin,  for  an  annuity  of  eight 
hundred  francs,  which  was  increased  to  four  thousand  by  the  pub- 
lisher. On  this  small  income  Beranger  lived  content  till  his  death  on 
July  i6th,  1857.  The  government  of  Napoleon  HI.  took  charge  of  his 
funeral,  which  was  solemnized  with  great  pomp.  Although  Beranger 
was  essentially  the  poet  of  the  middle  classes,  and  was  extremely 
popular,  care  was  taken  to  exclude  the  people  from  the  funeral 
procession.  While  he  never  denied  that  he  was  the  grandson  of  a 
tailor,  he  signed  de  Beranger,  to  be  distinguished  from  other  writers 
of  the  same  name.  The  de,  however,  had  always  been  claimed  by 
his  father,  who  had  left  him  nothing  but  that  pretense  of  nobility. 

For  forty  years,  from  181 5  to  his  death,  Beranger  was  perhaps  the 
most  popular  French  writer  of  his  time,  and  he  was  ranked  amongst 
the  greatest  French  poets.  There  has  been  a  reaction  against  that 
enthusiasm,  and  he  is  now  severely  judged  by  the  critics.  They  say 
that  he  lacked  inspiration,  and  was  vulgar,  bombastic,  and  grandilo- 
quent. Little  attention  is  paid  to  him,  therefore,  in  general  histories 
of  French  literature.  But  if  he  is  not  entitled  to  stand  on  the  high 
pedestal  given  to  him  by  his  contemporaries,  we  yet  cannot  deny 
genius  to  the  man  who  for  more  than  a  generation  swayed  the 
hearts  of  the  people  at  his  will,  and  exerted  on  his  countrymen  and 
on  his  epoch  an  immense  influence. 

Many  of  his  songs  are  coarse  and  even  immoral;  but  his  muse 
was  often  in.spired  by  patriotic  subjects,  and  in  his  poems  on 
Napoleon  he  sings  of  the  exploits  of  the  great  general  defending 
French  soil  from  foreign  invasion,  or  he  delights  in  the  victories  of 
the  Emperor  as  reflecting  glory  upon  France.  Victor  Hugo  shared 
this  feeling  when  he  wrote  his  inspiring  verses  in  praise  of  the  con- 
queror. Both  poets,  Beranger  and  Hugo,  contributed  to  create  the 
Napoleonic   legend   which   facilitated  the  election  of   Louis  Napoleon 


JEAN-PIERRE   DE   BERANGER  1 787 

to  the  presidency  in  1848,  and  brought  about  the  Second  Empire. 
What  is  more  touching  than  <  The  Reminiscences  of  the  People  ^  ? 
Are  we  not  inclined  to  cry  out,  like  the  little  children  listening  to 
the  old  grandmother  who  speaks  of  Napoleon :  « He  spoke  to  you, 
grandmother!  He  sat  down  there,  grandmother!  You  have  yet  his 
glass,  grandmother ! »  The  whole  song  is  poetic,  natural,  and  simple. 
Frangois  Coppee,  the  great  poet,  said  of  it:  «Ah!  if  I  had  only  writ- 
ten <The  Reminiscences  of  the  People,*  I  should  not  feel  concerned 
about  the  judgment  of  posterity.** 

Other  works  of  Beranger's  are  on  serious  subjects,  as  <Mary 
Stuart's  Farewell  to  France,*  <  The  Holy  Alliance,*  <The  Swallows,* 
and  <The  Old  Banner.*  All  his  songs  have  a  charm.  His  wit  is  not 
of  the  highest  order,  and  he  lacks  the  finesse  of  La  Fontaine,  but  he 
is  often  quaint  and  always  amusing  in  his  songs  devoted  to  love  and 
Lisette,  to  youth  and  to  wine.  He  is  not  one  of  the  greatest  French 
lyric  poets,  and  cannot  be  compared  with  Lamartine,  Hugo,  Musset, 
and  Vigny;  nevertheless  he  has  much  originality,  and  is  without  doubt 
the  greatest  song-writer  that  France  has  produced.  He  elevated 
the  song  and  made  it  both  a  poem  and  a  drama,  full  of  action  and 
interest. 

Beranger  wrote  slowly  and  with  great  care,  and  many  of  his  songs 
cost  him  much  labor.  He  was  filled  with  compassion  for  the  weak, 
for  the  poor  and  unfortunate ;  he  loved  humanity,  and  above  all  he 
dearly  loved  France.  Posterity  will  do  him  justice  and  will  pre- 
serve at  least  a  great  part  of  his  work.  M.  Ernest  Legouve  in  his 
interesting  work,  <  La  Lecture  en  Action,*  relates  that  one  day, 
while  walking  with  Beranger  in  the  Bois  de  Boulogne,  the  latter 
stopped  in  the  middle  of  an  alley,  and  taking  hold  of  M.  Legouve's 
hand,  said  with  emotion,  <<My  dear  friend,  my  ambition  would  be 
that  one  hundred  of  my  lines  should  remain.**  M.  Legouve  adds, 
« There  will  remain  more  than  that,**  and  his  words  have  been  con- 
firmed. If  we  read  aloud,  if  we  sing  them,  we  too  shall  share  the 
enthusiasm  of  our  fathers,  who  were  carried  away  by  the  pathos,  the 
grandeur,  the  wit,  the  inexpressible  charm  of  the  unrivaled  chansonnier. 


Q>Qjd^    /^^^fcl 


1788  JEAN-PIERRE   DE   BERANGER 

FROM    <THE   GIPSIES > 
(Les  Boh^miens) 

To  SEE  is  to  have.     Come,  hurry  anew! 
Life  on  the  wing 
Is  a  rapturous  thing. 
To  see  is  to  have.     Come,  hurry  anew! 
For  to  see  the  world  is  to  conquer  it  too. 

So  naught  do  we  own,   from  pride  left  free, 

From  statutes  vain. 

From  heavy  chain ; 
So  naught  do  we  own,  from  pride  left  free,- 
Cradle  nor  house  nor  coflfin  have  we. 

But  credit  our  jollity  none  the  less. 

Noble  or  priest,  or 

Servant  or  master; 
But  credit  our  jollity  none  the  less,  — 
Liberty  always  means  happiness. 

THE   GAD-FLY 

(La  Mouche) 

IN  THE  midst  of  our  laughter  and  singing, 
'Mid  the  clink  of  our  glasses  so  gay. 
What  gad-fly  is  over  us  winging. 

That  returns  when  we  drive  him  away 
'Tis  some  god.     Yes,  I  have  a  suspicion 
Of  our  happiness  jealous,  he's  come: 
Let  us  drive  him  away  to  perdition, 

That  he  bore  us  no  more  with  his  hum. 

Transformed  to  a  gad-fly  imscemly, 

I  am  certain  that  we  must  have  here 
Old  Reason,  the  grumbler,   extremely 

Annoyed  by  our  joy  and  our  cheer. 
He  tells  us  in  tones  of  monition 

Of  the  clouds  and  the  tempests  to  come: 
Let  us  drive  him  away  to  perdition, 

That  he  bore  us  no  more  with  his  hum. 

It  is  Reason  who  comes  to  me,  quaffing. 
And  says,  **  It  is  time  to  retire : 


JEAN-PIERRE   DE   BERANGER  I  789 

At  your  age  one  stops  drinking  and  laughing, 
Stops  loving,  nor  sings  with  such  fire ; " — 

An  alarn;!  that  sounds  ever  its  mission 
When  the  sweetest  of  flames  overcome: 

Let  us  drive  him  away  to  perdition, 

That  he  bore  us  no  more  with  his  hum. 

It  is  Reason!     Look  out  there  for  Lizzie! 

His  dart  is  a  menace  alway. 
He  has  touched  her,  she  swoons  —  she  is  dizzy: 

Come,   Cupid,  and  drive  him  away. 
Pursue  him;  compel  his  submission, 

LTntil  under  your  strokes  he  succumb. 
Let  us  drive  him  away  to  perdition. 

That  he  bore  us  no  more  with  his  hum. 

Hurrah,  Victory!     See,  he  is  drowning 

In  the  wine  that  Lizzetta  has  poured. 
Come,  the  head  of  Joy  let  us  be  crowning, 

That  again  he  may  reign  at  our  board. 
He  was  threatened  just  now  with  dismission. 

And  a  fly  made  us  all  rather  glum : 
But  we've  sent  him  away  to  perdition ; 

He  will  bore  us  no  more  with  his  hum. 

Translation  of  Walter  Learned. 


DRAW    IT  MILD 
(Les  Petits  Coups) 

Let's  learn  to  temper  our  desires. 
Not  harshly  to  constrain; 
And  since  excess  makes  pleasure  less, 
Why,  so  much  more  refrain. 
Small  table  —  cozy  corner  —  here 

We  well  may  be  beguiled; 
Our  worthy  host  old  wine  can  boast: 
Drink,   drink — but  draw  it  mild! 

He  who  would  many  an  evil  shun 
Will  find  my  plan  the  best  — 

To  trim  the  sail  as  shifts  the  gale, 
And  half-seas  over  rest. 

Enjoyment  is  an  art  —  disgust 
Is  bred  of  joy  run  wild. 


J790  JEAN-PIERRE  DE  BERANGER 

Too  deep  a  drain  upsets  the  brain: 
Drink,   drink  —  but  draw  it  mild! 

Our  indigence — let's  cheer  it  Up; 

'Tis  nonsense  to  repine; 
To  give  to  Hope  the  fullest  scope 

Needs  but  one  draught  of  wine. 
And  oh !  be  temperate,  to  enjoy. 

Ye  on  whom  Fate  hath  smiled; 
If  deep  the  bowl,  your  thirst  control: 

Drink,  drink ^ — but  draw  it  mild! 

What,   Phyllis,  dost  thou  fear  ?  at  this 

My  lesson  dost  thou  scoff  ? 
Or  would'st  thou  say,  light  draughts  betray 

The  toper  falling  off  ? 
Keen  taste,  eyes  keen  —  whate'er  be  seen 

Of  joy  in  thine,   fair  child, 
Love's  philtre  use,  but  don't  abuse: 

Drink,  drink  —  but  draw  it  mild! 

Yes,  without  hurrying,  let  us  roam 

From  feast  to  feast  of  gladness; 
And  reach  old  age,  if  not  quite  sage, 

With  method  in  our  madness ! 
Our  health  is  sound,  good  wines  abound; 

Friends,  these  are  riches  piled. 
To  use  with  thrift  the  twofold  gift: 

Drink,  drink  —  but  draw  it  mild! 

Translation  of  William  Young. 

THE   KING  OF  YVETOT 

THERE  was  a  king  of  Yvetot, 
Of  whom  renown  hath  little  said. 
Who  let  all  thoughts  of  glory  go. 
And  dawdled  half  his  days  a-bed; 
And  every  night,  as  night  came  round. 
By  Jenny  with  a  nightcap  crowned, 
Slept  very  sound : 
Sing  ho,  ho,  ho !  and  he,  he,  he ! 
That's  the  kind  of  king  for  me. 

And  every  day  it  came  to  pass. 

That  four  lusty  meals  made  he; 
And  step  by  step,  upon  an  ass. 

Rode  abroad,  his  realms  to  see; 


JEAN-PIERRE  DE   BfiRANGER  1791 

And  wherever  he  did  stir, 
What  think  you  was  his  escort,  sir? 
Why,  an  old  ciir. 

Sing  ho,  ho,  ho!  and  he,  he,  he! 

That's  the  kind  of  king  for  me. 

If  e'er  he  went  into  excess, 

'Twas  from  a  somewhat  lively  thirst; 
But  he  who  would  his  subjects  bless. 

Odd's  fish!  —  must  wet  his  whistle  first; 
And  so  from  every  cask  they  got. 
Our  king  did  to  himself  allot 
At  least  a  pot. 
Sing  ho,  ho,  ho!  and  he,  he,  he! 
That's  the  kind  of  king  for  me. 

To  all  the  ladies  of  the  land 

A  courteous  king,  and  kind,  was  he  — 
The  reason  why,  you'll  understand. 

They  named  him  Pater  Patriae. 
Each  year  he  called  his  fighting  men, 
And  marched  a  league  from  home,  and  then 
Marched  back  again. 
Sing  ho,  ho,  ho!  and  he,  he,  he! 
That's  the  kind  of  king  for  me. 

Neither  by  force  nor  false  pretense, 

He  sought  to  make  his  kingdom  great,  • 
And  made  (O  princes,  learn  from  hence) 
<<  Live  and  let  live  >*  his  rule  of  state. 
'Twas  only  when  he  came  to  die. 
That  his  people  who  stood  by 
Were  known  to  cry. 
Sing  ho,  ho,  ho!  and  he,  he,  he! 
That's  the  kind  of  king  for  me. 

The  portrait  of  this  best  of  kings 

Is  extant  still,  upon  a  sign 
That  on  a  village  tavern  swings. 

Famed  in  the  country  for  good  wine. 
The  people  in  their  Sunday  trim. 
Filling  their  glasses  to  the  brim, 
Look  up  to  him. 
Singing  <^  ha,  ha,  ha!'^  and  *  he,  he,  he! 
That's  the  sort  of  king  for  me.* 

Version  of  W.  M.  Thackeray. 


1792  JEAN-PIERRE  DE   BERANGER 


R 


FORTUNE 

ap!  rap! — Is  that  my  lass  — 

Rap!  rap! — is  rapping  there? 
It  is  Fortune.     Let  her  pass! 
I'll  not  open  the  door  to  her. 
Rap!  rap!  — 


All  of  my  friends  are  making  gay 
My  little  room,  with  lips  wine-wet: 
We  only  wait  for  you,  Lisette! 

Fortune !  you  may  go  your  way. 
Rap!  rap!  — 

If  we  might  credit  half  her  boast, 
"What  wonders  gold  has  in  its  gift! 
Well,  we  have  twenty  bottles  left 

And  still  some  credit  with  our  host. 
Rap!  rap!  — 

Her  pearls,  and  rubies  too,  she  quotes, 
And  mantles  more  than  sumptuous: 
Lord!  but  the  purple's  naught  to  us,- 

We're  just  now  taking  off  our  coats. 
Rap!  rap!  — 

She  treats  us  as  the  rawest  youths, 
With  tp,lk  of  genius  and  of  fame : 
Thank  calumny,  alas,  for  shame! 

Our  faith  is  spoiled  in  laurel  growths. 
Rap!  rap!  — 

Far  from  our  pleasures,  we  care  not 
Her  highest  heavens  to  attain; 
She  fills  her  big  balloons  in  vain 

Till  we  have  swamped  our  little  boat. 
Rap!  rap!  — 

Yet  all  our  neighbors  crowd  to  be 
Within  her  ring  of  promises, 
Ah!  surely,  friends!  our  mistresses 

Will  cheat  us  more  agreeably. 
Rap!  rap!  — 


JEAN-PIERRE  DE  BERANGER  i-jf)- 

THE   PEOPLE'S   REMINISCENCES 
(Les  Souvenirs  du  Peuple) 

AY,   MANY  a  day  the  straw-thatched  cot 
Shall  echo  with  his  glory! 
The  humblest  shed,  these  fifty  years, 
Shall  know  no  other  story. 
There  shall  the  idle  villagers 
To  some  old  dame  resort. 
And  beg  her  with  those  good  old  tales 

To  make  their  evenings  short. 
*What  though  they  say  he  did  us  harm? 

Our  love  this  cannot  dim; 
Come,  granny,  talk  of  him  to  us; 
Come,   granny,  talk  of  him." 

*Well,  children  —  with  a  train  of  kings, 

Once  he  passed  by  this  spot; 
'Twas  long  ago;   I  had  but  just 

Begun  to  boil  the  pot. 
On  foot  he  climbed  the  hill,   whereon 

I  watched  him  on  his  way: 
He  wore  a  small  three-cornered  hat; 

His  overcoat  was  gray. 
I  was  half  frightened  till  he  said 

<Good  day,   my  dear!*  to  me.'* 

*  O  granny,  granny,  did  he  speak  ? 

What,  granny !   you  and  he  ?  ** 

*Next  year,  as  I,  poor  soul,  by  chance 

Through  Paris  strolled  one  day, 
I  saw  him  taking,  with  his  court, 

To  Notre  Dame  his  way. 
The  crowd  were  charmed  with  such  a  show; 

Their  hearts  were  filled  with  pride : 

*  What  splendid  weather  for  the  fete ! 

Heaven  favors  him  !  *    they  cried. 
Softly  he  smiled,   for  God  had  given 

To  his  fond  arms  a  boy." 
**Oh,  how  much  joy  you  must  have  felt! 

O  granny,  how  much  joy!" 

<*  But  when  at  length  our  poor  Champagne 
By  foes  was  overrun, 


m— 113 


1794  JEAN-PIERRE  DE   BERANGER 

He  seemed  alone  to  hold  his  ground; 

Nor  dangers  would  he  shun. 
One  night  —  as  might  be  now  —  I  heard 

A  knock  —  the  door  unbarred  — 
And  saw: — good  God!    'twas  he,  himself, 

With  but  a  scanty  guard. 
<Oh,  what  a  war  is  this!*  he  cried, 

Taking  this  very  chair.'* 
<*What!   granny,   granny,   there  he  sat? 

What !    granny,   he  sat  there  ?  ** 

*<  *  I'm  hungry,  *  said  he :   quick  I  served 

Thin  wine  and  hard  brown  bread; 
He  dried  his  clothes,  and  by  the  fire 

In  sleep  dropped  down  his  head. 
Waking,  he  saw  my  tears  —  ^  Cheer  up, 

Good  dame !  *  says  he,   ^  I  go 
'Neath  Paris'  walls  to  strike  for  France 

One  last  avenging  blow.* 
He  went;  but  on  the  cup  he  used 

Such  value  did  I  set  — 
It  has  been  treasured.**  —  "What!  till  now  r" 

You  have  it,  granny,  yet  ?  ** 

^^Here  'tis:  but  'twas  the  hero's  fate 

To  ruin  to  be  led; 
He  whom  a  Pope  had  crowned,  alas! 

In  a  lone  isle  lies  dead. 
'Twas  long  denied:     <No,  no,*  said  they, 

<  Soon  shall  he  reappear ! 
O'er  ocean  comes  he,  and  the  foe 

Shall  find  his  master  here.* 
Ah,  what  a  bitter  pang  I  felt, 

When  forced  to  own  'twas  true!** 
*Poor  granny!   Heaven  for  this  will  look  — 

Will  kindly  look  on  you.** 

Translation  of  William  Young. 


JEAN-PIERRE  DE  BERANGER  1795 

THE   OLD  TRAMP 
(Le  ViEux  Vagabond) 

HERE  in  this  gutter  let  me  die: 
Weary  and  sick  and  old,  I've  done. 
"He's  drunk,'*  will  say  the  passers-by - 
All  right,   I  want  no  pity  —  none. 
I  see  the  heads  that  turn  away, 

While  others  glance  and  toss  me  sous: 
*Off  to  your  junket!  go!'*  I  say: 
Old  tramp,  —  to  die  I  need  no  help  from  you. 

Yes,   of  old  age  I'm  dying  now: 

Of  hunger  people  never  die. 
I  hoped  some  almshouse  might  allow 

A  shelter  when  my  end  was  nigh; 
But  all  retreats  are  overflowed. 

Such  crowds  are  suffering  and  forlorn. 
My  nurse,  alas!  has  been  the  road: 
Old  tramp, — here  let  me  die  where  I  was  bom. 

When  young,  it  used  to  be  my  prayer 

To  craftsmen,  <*  Let  me  learn  your  trade.** 

** Clear  out  —  we've  got  no  work  to  spare; 
Go  beg,**  was  all  reply  they  made. 

You  rich,  who  bade  me  work,  I've  fed 
With  relish  on  the  bones  you  threw; 

Made  of  your  straw  an  easy  bed: 
Old  tramp,  —  I  have  no  curse  to  vent  on  you. 

Poor  wretch,  I  had  the  choice  to  steal; 

But  no,  I'd  rather  beg  my  bread. 
At  most  I  thieved  a  wayside  meal 

Of  apples  ripening  overhead. 
Yet  twenty  times  have  I  been  thrown 

In  prison  —  'twas  the  King's  decree ; 
Robbed  of  the  only  thing  1  own: 
Old  tramp, — at  least  the  sun  belongs  to  me. 

The  poor  man  —  is  a  country  his? 

What  are  to  me  your  corn  and  wine, 
Your  glory  and  your  industries. 

Your  orators  ?     They  are  not  mine. 
And  when  a  foreign  foe  waxed  fat 

Within  your  undefended  walls. 


1796  JEAN-PIERRE   DE   BfiR ANGER 

I  shed  my  tears,  poor  fool,  at  that: 
Old  tramp, — his  hand  was  open  to  my  calls. 

Why,  like  the  hateful  bug  you  kill, 

Did  you  not  crush  me  when  you  could  ? 

Or  better,  teach  me  ways  and  skill 
To  labor  for  the  common  good  ? 

The  ugly  grub  an  ant  may  end. 

If  sheltered  from  the  cold  and  fed. 

You  might  have  had  me  for  a  friend: 
Old  tramp, — I  die  your  enemy  instead. 

Translated  for  the  <  World's  Best  Literature.) 


FIFTY   YEARS 

(CiNQUANTE    AnS) 

WHEREFORE  thcse  flowers  ?  floral  applause  ? 
Ah,  no,  these  blossoms  came  to  say 
That  I  am  growing  old,  because 
I  number  fifty  years  to-day. 
O  rapid,   ever-fleeting  day ! 

O  moments  lost,   I  know  not  how ! 
O  wrinkled  cheek  and  hair  grown  gray! 
Alas,  for  I  am  fifty  now! 

Sad  age,  when  we  pursue  no  more  — 
Fruit  dies  upon  the  withering  tree: 

Hark!  some  one  rapped  upon  my  door. 
Nay,  open  not.     'Tis  not  for  me  — 

Or  else  the  doctor  calls.     Not  yet 
Must  I  expect  his  studious  bow. 

Once  I'd  have  called,  <^  Come  in,  Lizzette**  — 
Alas,  for  I  am  fifty  now! 

In  age  what  aches  and  pains  abound; 

The  torturing  gout  racks  us  awhile ; 
Blindness,   a  prison  dark,   profound; 

Or  deafness  that  provokes  a  smile. 
Then  Reason's  lamp  grows  faint  and  dim 

With  flickering  ray.     Children,  allow 
Old  Age  the  honor  due  to  him  — 
Alas,  for  I  am  fifty  now! 

Ah,  heaven !  the  voice  of  Death  I  know, 
Who  rubs  his  hands  in  joyous  mood; 


JEAN-PIERRE   DE  BERANGER  i-jg-j 

The  sexton  knocks  and  I  must  go  — 
Farewell,  my  friends  the  human  brood! 

Below  are  famine,  plague,  and  strife; 
Above,  new  heavens  my  soul  endow: 

Since  God  remains,  begin,  new  life! 
Alas,  for  I  am  fifty  now! 

But  no,   'tis  you,  sweetheart,  whose  youth. 

Tempting  my  soul  with  dainty  ways, 
Shall  hide  from  it  the  sombre  truth. 

This  incubus  of  evil  days. 
Springtime  is  yours,  and  flowers;  come  then, 

Scatter  your  roses  on  my  brow, 
And  let  me  dream  of  youth  again  — 
Alas,  for  I  am  fifty  now! 

Translation  of  Walter  Learned 


THE    GARRET 

WITH  pensive  eyes  the  little  room  I  view, 
Where  in  my  youth  I  weathered  it  so  long, 
With  a  wild  mistress,  a  stanch  friend  or  two, 
And  a  light  heart  still  breaking  into  song; 
Making  a  mock  of  life,  and  all  its  cares. 

Rich  in  the  glory  of  my  rising  sun: 
Lightly  I  vaulted  up  four  pair  of  stairs, 

In  the  brave  days  when  I  was  twenty-one. 

Yes;    'tis  a  garret  —  let  him  know't  who  will  — 

There  was  my  bed  —  full  hard  it  was  and  small; 
My  table  there  —  and  I  decipher  still 

Half  a  lame  couplet  charcoaled  on  the  wall. 
Ye  joys,  that  Time  hath  swept  with  him  away. 

Come  to  mine  eyes,  ye  dreams  of  love  and  fun: 
For  you  I  pawned  my  watch  how  many  a  day, 

In  the  brave  days  when  I  was  twenty-one! 

And  see  my  little  Jessy,  first  of  all; 

She  comes  with  pouting  lips  and  sparkling  eyes: 
Behold,  how  roguishly  she  pins  her  shawl 

Across  the  narrow  casement,  curtain-wise: 
Now  by  the  bed  her  petticoat  glides  down, 

And  when  did  women  look  the  worse  in  none? 
I  have  heard  since  who  paid  for  many  a  gown, 

In  the  brave  days  when  I  was  twenty-one. 


1798  JEAN-PIERRE  DE   BfiR ANGER 

One  jolly  evening,  when  my  friends  and  I 

Made  happy  music  with  our  songs  and  cheers. 
A  shout  of  triumph  motmted  up  thus  high, 

And  distant  cannon  opened  on  our  ears; 
We  rise, —  we  join  in  the  triumphant  strain.— 

Napoleon  conquers  —  Austerlitz  is  won  — 
Tyrants  shall  never  tread  us  down  again, 

In  the  brave  days  when  I  was  twenty-one. 

Let  us  begone  —  the  place  is  sad  and  strange  — 

How  far,  far  off,  these  happy  times  appear! 
All  that  I  have  to  live  I'd  gladly  change 

For  one  such  month  as  I  have  wasted  here  — 
To  draw  long  dreams  of  beauty,  love,  and  power, 

From  founts  of  hope  that  never  will  outrun, 
And  drink  all  life's  quintessence  in  an  hour: 

Give  me  the  days  when  I  was  twenty-one. 

Version  of  W.  M.  Thackeray. 


MY  TOMB 

(MON    TOMBEAU) 

What!  whilst  I'm  well,  beforehand  you  design, 
At  vast  expense,  for  me  to  build  a  shrine  ? 
Friends,   'tis  absurd!  to  no  such  outlay  go; 
Leave  to  the  great  the  pomp  and  pride  of  woe. 
Take  what  for  marble  or  for  brass  would  pay  — 
For  a  dead  beggar  garb  by  far  too  gay  — 
And  buy  life- stirring  wine  on  my  behalf: 
The  money  for  my  tomb  right  gayly  let  us  quaff! 

A  mausoleum  worthy  of  my  thanks 

At  least  would  cost  you  twenty  thousand  francs: 

Come,  for  six  months,  rich  vale  and  balmy  sky. 

As  gay  recluses,  be  it  ours  to  try. 

Concerts  and  balls,  where  Beauty's  self  invites. 

Shall  furnish  us  our  castle  of  delights; 

I'll  run  the  risk  of  finding  life  too  sweet: 

The  money  for  my  tomb  right  gaj'ly  let  us  eat! 

But  old  I  grow,   and  Lizzy's  youthful  yet: 
Costly  attire,  then,  she  expects  to  get; 
For  to  long  fast  a  show  of  wealth  resigns  — 
Bear  witness  Longchamps,  where  all  Paris  shines! 


JEAN-PIERRE   DE   BERANGER  1 799 

You  to  my  fair  one  something  surely  owe; 
A  Cashmere  shawl  she's  looking  for,  I  know: 
'Twere  well  for  life  on  such  a  faithful  breast 
The  money  for  my  tomb  right  gayly  to  invest! 

No  box  of  state,  good  friends,  would  I  engage, 
For  mine  own  use,  where  spectres  tread  the  stage: 
What  poor  wan  man  with  haggard  eyes  is  this  ? 
Soon  must  he  die  —  ah,  let  him  taste  of  bliss! 
The  veteran  first  should  the  raised  curtain  see  — 
There  in  the  pit  to  keep  a  place  for  me, 
(Tired  of  his  wallet,  long  he  cannot  live)  — 
The  money  for  my  tomb  to  him  let's  gayly  give! 

What  doth  it  boot  me,  that  some  learned  eye 
May  spell  my  name  on  gravestone,  by  and  by  ? 
As  to  the  flowers  they  promise  for  my  bier, 
I'd  rather,  living,  scent  their  perfume  here. 
And  thou,  posterity!  —  that  ne'er  mayst  be  — 
Waste  not  thy  torch  in  seeking  signs  of  me ! 
Like  a  wise  man,  I  deemed  that  I  was  bound 
The  money  for  my  tomb  to  scatter  gayly  round! 

Translation  of  William  Young. 


FROM  HIS  PREFACE  TO  HIS  COLLECTED  POEMS 

I  HAVE  treated  it  [the  revolution  of  1830]  as  a  power  which 
might  have  whims  one  should  be  in  a  position  to  resist.  All 
or  nearly  all  my  friends  have  taken  office.  I  have  still  one 
or  two  who  are  hanging  from  the  greased  pole.  I  am  pleased 
to  believe  that  they  are  caught  by  the  coat-tails,  in  spite  of  their 
efforts  to  come  down.  I  might  therefore  have  had  a  share  in  the 
distribution  of  offices.  Unluckily  I  have  no  love  for  sinecures, 
and  all  compulsory  labor  has  grown  intolerable  to  me,  except  per- 
haps that  of  a  copying  clerk.  Slanderers  have  pretended  that  I 
acted  from  virtue.  Pshaw!  I  acted  from  laziness.  That  defect 
has  served  me  in  place  of  merits;  wherefore  I  recommend  it  to 
many  of  our  honest  men.  It  exposes  one,  however,  to  curious 
reproaches.  It  is  to  that  placid  indolence  that  severe  critics 
have  laid  the  distance  I  have  kept  myself  from  those  of  my  hon- 
orable friends  who  have  attained  power.  Giving  too  much  honor 
to  what  they  choose  to  call  my  fine  intellect,  and  forgetting  too 
much   how   far   it   is   from   simple   good   sense   to   the    science   of 


jgoo  JEAN-PIERRE   DE   BfiRANGER 

great  affairs,  these  critics  maintain  that  my  counsels  might  have 
enhghtened  more  than  one  minister.  If  one  beheves  them,  I, 
crouching  behind  our  statesmen's  velvet  chairs,  would  have  con- 
jured down  the  winds,  dispelled  the  storms,  and  enabled  France 
to  swim  in  an  ocean  of  delights.  We  should  all  have  had  liberty 
to  sell,  or  rather  to  give  away,  but  we  are  still  rather  ignorant 
of  the  price.  Ah !  my  two  or  three  friends  who  take  a  song- 
writer for  a  magician,  have  you  never  heard,  then,  that  power  is 
a  bell  which  prevents  those  who  set  it  ringing  from  hearing  any- 
thing else  ?  Doubtless  ministers  sometimes  consult  those  at  hand : 
consultation  is  a  means  of  talking  about  one's  self  which  is  rarely 
neglected.  But  it  will  not  be  enough  even  to  consult  in  good 
faith  those  who  will  advise  in  the  same  way.  One  must  still  act: 
that  is  the  duty  of  the  position.  The  purest  intentions,  the  most 
enlightened  patriotism,  do  not  always  confer  it.  Who  has  not 
seen  high  officials  leave  a  counselor  with  brave  intentions,  and 
an  instant  after  return  to  him,  from  I  know  not  what  fascination, 
with  a  perplexity  that  gave  the  lie  to  the  wisest  resolutions  ? 
**  Oh !  '*  they  say,  **  we  will  not  be  caught  there  again !  what 
drudgery!"  The  more  shamefaced  add,  ^*  I'd  like  to  see  you 
in  my  place !  "  When  a  minister  says  that,  be  sure  he  has  no 
longer  a  head.  There  is  indeed  one  of  them,  but  only  one,  who, 
without  having  lost  his  head,  has  often  used  this  phrase  with  the 
utmost  sincerity;  he  has  therefore  never  used  it  to  a  friend. 


iSooa 

HENRI  LOUIS  BERGSON 

(1859-)  . 

BY   W.    P.    MONTAGUE 

5F  Jewish  origin,  Henri  Louis  Bergson  was  born  at  Paris  and 
educated  at  the  Lycee  Condorcet.  In  1878  he  entered  the 
ficole  Normale  Superieure,  and  passed  the  ((agregation  de 
philosophic))  on  leaving  it  in  1881.  For  two  years  after  this  he  was 
professor  of  philosophy  at  the  Lycee  at  Angers,  and  held  one  or  two 
similar  appointments  before  taking  the  doctorate  in  letters  in  1889,  his 
thesis  being  entitled  (Quid  Aristoteles  de  loco  senserit.)-  In  the  same 
year  he  published  his  essay,  (Sur  les  Donnees  immediates  de  la  Con- 
science,) which  was  later  translated  into  English  under  the  title  (Time 
and  Free  Will.)  His  appointment  to  one  of  the  most  famous  lycees  in 
France,  the  Lycee  Henri  IV.  in  Paris,  followed.  In  1896  he  published 
.(Matiere  et  Memoire,  Essai  sur  la  Relation  du  Corps  avec  I'Esprit) 
(Matter  and  Memory),  and  again  received  promotion,  this  time  to  be 
lecturer  at  the  Ecole  Normale  where  he  had  been  a  student.  His  essay 
on  ^Laughter,)  (Le  Rire,  Essai  sur  la  Signification  du  Comique,)  co- 
incided in  publication  with  his  appointment  to  the  highest  academic 
dignity  in  France  as  professor  at  the  College  de  France,  which  he  still 
holds.  He  is  also  a  Chevalier  of  the  Legion  of  Honor,  a  member  of  the 
Institute,  and  of  the  Academy  of  IMoral  and  Political  Science.  He  was 
elected  to  the  French  Academy  in  1914.  His  (Creative  Evolution)" 
((L'Evolution  Creatrice) )  was  published  in  French  in  1907  and  in 
English  in  191 1,  and  his  two  Oxford  lectures,  (La  Perception  du 
Changement,)  in  191 1;  he  has  also  published  a  number  of  articles  in 
philosophical  journals,  one  of  which  was  translated  into  English  under 
the  title  (Introduction  to  Metaphysics)  in  191 2.  In  1913  he  received 
the  degree  of  Litt.D.  at  Columbia  University,  New  York  City,  and  gave 
a  course  of  lectures  which  was  extraordinarily  successful.  In  England 
he  was  elected  President  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research,  and 
delivered  an  address  of  very  great  interest.  M.  Bergson's  polished 
literary  style  and  his  unusual  charm  as  a  lecturer  make  his  philosophical 
discourses  and  writings  peculiarly  attractive  to  the  non-philosophical 
mind,  and  his  remarkable  popularity  has  perhaps  militated  to  some 
extent  against  his  reputation  as  a  philosopher. 
Bergson's  philosophy  contains:  — 

I.  A  methodological  theory  of  the  way  in  which  truth  in  science  and 
philosophy  should  be  sought.      (Set  forth  in  (Time  and  Free  Will.) ) 

II.  A  psychological  theory  of'  the  relation  of  the  mind  of  the  in- 
dividual to  his  brain  and  body.      (Set  forth  in  (Matter  and  Memory.)) 


l8oob  HENRI    LOUIS    BERGSON 

III.  A  biological  theory  of  the  manner  in  which  life  evolves  from 
lower  to  liigher  forms.  (Set  forth  together  with  his  other  theories  in 
tCreative    Evolution.)) 

IV.  An  ethical  and  religious  theory  of  human  personality.  (No- 
where explicitly  set  forth,  but  more  or  less  implied  in  all  of  his  writings.) 

The  four  branches  of  this  philosophy  appear  to  have  sprung  from 
a  single  source;  viz.,  an  aperqu  or  intuitive  vision  on  the  part  of  their 
author  as  to  the  inner  nature  of  conscious  life  and  of  reality  itself. 

For  Bcrgson,  as  for  other  mystics  who  found  their  philosophy  upon 
a  principle  that  is  a  product  of  feeling  rather  than  of  thought,  it  is  hard 
to  communicate  the  result  in  terms  of  reason.  We  may  gather,  however, 
from  his  various  descriptions  that  Bergson's  intuition  reveals  the  self  of 
man  (i)  as  temporal  rather  than  spatial;  (2)  as  active  rather  than  passive; 
(3)  as  free  and  creative  rather  than  fixed  and  bound  by  law;  (4)  as  a 
flowing  continuum  of  dynamic  states  rather  than  a  system  of  definitely 
related  objects j  (5)  as  a  being  that  carries  its  own  increasing  past  with 
it,  and  by  means  of  this  ((pure  duration))  creates  its  own  future,  the 
nature  of  which  not  even  the  most  perfect  science  could  predict.  From 
the  standpoint  of  this  intuition  the  world  of  mere  intellect  (consisting 
of  definite  objects  and  logical  relations,  of  matter  and  space  and  physical 
law),  is  revealed  as  something  which,  though  it  was  originally  derived 
from  the  life-force,  is  now  an  antagonist  which  must,  by  the  process  of 
evolution,  be  subdued,  and  molded  to  the  needs  of  the  very  spirit  which 
created  it  and  which  increasingly  pervades  it. 

Fortunately  it  is  not  necessary  to  understand  this  mystic  revelation, 
in  which  all  aspects  of  the  Bergsonian  philosophy  are  summed  up,  in 
order  to  appreciate  the  main  parts  of  Bergson's  system.  For  in  spite 
of  their  common  origin  these  parts  are  fairly  independent  of  one  another 
and  can  with  advantage  be  treated  separately.  We  shall,  then,  consider 
them  in  turn. 

I.  Methodological:  The  Nature  of  Truth  and  the  Criterion  of  Knowledge. — 
In  his  tlicory  of  the  nature  of  truth  and  of  the  best  way  of  obtain- 
ing it,  Bergson  combines  in  an  interesting  and  original  manner  two 
standpoints  which  in  philosophy  are  usually  opposed  to  one  another; 
he  is  at  once  a  pragmatist  and  a  mystic. 

With  the  pragmatists  he  holds  that  the  intellect  and  all  the  laws  and 
forms  of  logic  are  evolved  by  the  life-force  as  instruments  in  the  struggle 
with  matter.  And  as  thought  originates  from  practical  needs  so  it  has 
for  its  end  or  goal  the  satisfaction  of  practical  needs.  The  tradition 
known  in  philosophy  as  intellectualism,  which  holds  that  thought  begins 
and  ends  in  itself,  that  logic  is  independent  or  at  least  autonomous,  and 
that  its  laws  are  determined  without  reference  to  vital  interests,  is 
'repudiated.  Intellect  as  the  creature  of  life  is  also  its  servant.  Its  aim 
is  not  to  copy  reality  but  to  control  it,   and  the  supreme  criterion  of 


HENRI    LOUIS    BERGSON  l8ooc 

theoretical  excellence  is  practical  utility.  But  having  gone  thus  far 
with  the  pragmatists,  Bergson  refuses  to  take  the  final  step;  he  refuses, 
that  is,  to  identify  the  new  ideal  of  utility  with  the  old  ideal  of  truth. 
((Intelligence  should  aim  at  the  useful,  because  the  useful  is  the  true,)) 
say  the  pragmatists.  ((Intelligence  should  aim  at  the  useful,  although 
the  useful  is  not  the  true,))  says  Bergson.  In  short,  Bergson  takes  the 
discovery  of  truth  in  its  ordinary  meaning  as  the  discovery  of  what 
things  actually  are  regardless  of  whether  the  practical  consequences  of 
discovery  are  useful  or  harmful  to  the  one  who  attains  it.  To  discuss 
truth  in  this  old-fashioned  sense  of  the  term,  it  is  necessary  to  abandon 
the  intellect  to  the  pragmatist,  and  turn  to  that  alleged  faculty  which 
the  mystics  of  every  age  have  adopted,  namely  intuition.  It  is  not 
without  significance  that  Plotinus,  the  most  famous  of  ancient  European 
mystics,  is  Bergson's  favorite  philosopher.  And  yet  intuition,  as 
Bergson  employs  it,  is  far  more  accessible  and  far  less  mysterious  than 
the  intuition  which  Plotinus  called  ((ecstacy))  and  which  was  to  be 
obtained  only  in  a  state  of  trance.  To  our  philosopher,  the  intuitive 
vision  of  reality  is  available  to  anyone  who  will  turn  his  gaze  away 
from  the  outer  world  with  its  practical  interests,  and  watch,  or  rather 
feel,  the  inner  current  of  his  life  as  it  wells  up  afresh  at  each  moment  and 
before  it  has  time  to  split  up  into  the  perceptions  and  conceptions  of 
science. 

Something  of  the  nature  of  the  reality  thus  revealed  we  have  already 
described  in  the  introductory  section  of  this  article.  And  here  we  can 
only  repeat  that  the  vision  thus  given  suffices  to  convince  Bergson  that 
pure  spiritual  activity,  enduring  and  creating  in  time,  is  infinitely  more 
real  than  the  world  of  matter  extended  in  space  and  governed  by  fixed 
laws.  The  latter,  which  to  most  men  is  so  terribly  and  oppressively 
real,  is  to  Bergson  merely  the  broken  and  inverted  reflection  of  the  life 
from  which  it  originates. 

Bergson's  theory  of  method  may  be  criticized  on  the  ground  that  it 
fails  to  explain  why  the  scientific  picture  of  the  world  should  be  so  useful 
if  it  is  false.  Ordinarily,  if  an  idea  is  of  use,  it  is  because  it  pictures  or 
presents  the  facts.  If  intuition  is  correct  in  its  revelation  of  all  reality 
as  pure  spiritual  activity,  it  is  hard  to  see  why  it  should  be  helpful  for 
the  scientist  to  misrepresent  it  as  composed  of  indestructible  particles 
of  matter  which  are  controlled  by  mechanical  laws.  This  objection  is 
partly  met  by  Bergson  himself  in  his  later  books,  in  which  he  seems 
willing  to  accord  to  matter  a  more  realistic  status  than  in  his  earlier 
work.  From  this  later  standpoint,  dead  matter  appears  as  the  spent 
remnant  of  what  was  formerly  life,  and  might  be  compared  to  the  ashes 
that  are  produced  by  a  fire.  In  this  connection  Bergson  compares 
physical  substance  and  its  laws  to  the  stick  of  a  rocket,  which  in  falling 
back  to  the  earth  reverses  the  principle  of  its  former  ascending  move- 


l8ood  HENRI    LOUIS    BERGSON 

mcnt.  If  we  take  this  more  realistic  view,  the  theories  of  science  appear 
not  as  useful  falsehoods  but  as  half-truths  which  present  in  exaggerated 
and  over-simplified  abstraction  a  perfectly  true  aspect  of  the  evolving 
world.  And  intuition,  instead  of  contradicting  logic,  is  now  employed 
to  supplement  its  onesidedness  and  to  reveal  to  us  that  in  addition  to 
matter  there  is  another  and  greater  reality,  namely,  spirit. 

A  more  serious  objection  to  Bergson's  theory  of  method,  or  rather 
to  the  mystical  part  of  it,  is  the  misunderstanding  to  which  it  has  given 
rise  in  the  minds  of  those  who  have  failed  to  study  it  in  the  light  of  the 
more  positive  parts  of  his  philosophy.  This  misunderstanding  is  two- 
fold. It  has,  in  the  first  place,  aroused  so  much  prejudice  on  the  part 
of  scientists  that  they  have  neglected  to  give  proper  attention  either  to 
his  destructive  criticisms  of  commonly  accepted  theories  in  psychology 
and  biology  or  to  his  still  more  interesting  constructive  hypotheses  in 
both  of  those  sciences.  In  the  second  place,  the  same  mysticism  which 
has  repelled  the  scientists  who  should  be  his  friends  has  attracted  to 
him  many  foolish  people  who  hate  logic  in  any  form  and  who  hope  above 
all  things  to  see  modern  science  discredited  and  their  own  pet  brands 
of  obscurantism  and  emotionalism  enthroned  in  its  place.  We  can 
only  hope  that  this  double  misunderstanding  will  pass  away  and  that 
time  will  bring  to  Bergson  a  new  alignment  of  friends  and  of  enemies. 

II.  Psychological:  The  Nature  of  Mind  and  its  Relation  to  Body. — 
As  in  his  theory  of  method  Bergson  combined  the  new  theory  of  prag- 
matism with  the  old  theory  of  mysticism,  so  too  in  his  psychology  he 
combines  a  new  point  of  view,  sometimes  called  ((behaviorism))  with 
the  much  older  doctrine  of  dualism,  according  to  which  the  mind  or 
spirit  is  an  independent  entity  separable  from  the  body.  ((Behaviorism)) 
is  a  name  used  in  America  to  characterize  a  rapidly  increasing  tendency 
on  the  part  of  contemporary  psychologists  to  treat  all  mental  states  as 
forms  of  the  body's  behavior  when  it  is  reacting  to  its  environment. 
Not  only  acts  of  will,  but  thoughts,  emotions,  and  even  such  passive 
states  as  sensations  are  treated  as  responses  made  by  the  nervous  system 
to  outside  stimuli. 

Bergson  holds  that  the  perception  of  an  object  is  merely  the  antici- 
pation or  potentiality  of  our  body's  reaction  to  that  object.  In  (Matter 
and  Memory)  he  writes:  ((Everything  will  happen  as  if  we  allowed  to 
filter  through  us  that  action  of  external  things  which  is  real,  in  order  to 
arrest  and  retain  that  which  is  virtual.  This  virtual  action  of  things 
upon  our  body  and  of  our  body  upon  things  is  our  perception  itself.)) 
Thus  while  Bergson  does  not  agree  with  the  behaviorists  in  identifying 
perception  with  bodily  action  itself  he  does  identify  it  with  potential  or 
virtual  action;  and  to  that  extent  he  is  in  sympathy  v.'iih  the  prevailing 
tendency  to  interpret  consciousness  biologically  as  a  motor  function  of 
the  organism  rather  than  spiritually  as  the  inner  state  of  a  soul.     Now  if 


HENRI    LOUIS    BERGSON  l8ooe 

Bergson  were  to  stop  here  his  theory  of  mind  would  be  only  a  variant 
of  the  biological  materialism  of  present-day  psychology.  But  it  is  just 
at  this  stage  that  a  wholly  different  set  of  considerations  are  introduced. 
The  real  mind  or  self  is  for  Bergson  something  entirely  different  from 
perceptual  consciousness.  The  real  mind  consists  of  the  enduring  past 
which  each  individual  carries  with  him  in  his  memory,  and  which  in- 
creases with  each  moment  of  life,  as  a  snowball  increases  by  accumulat- 
ing the  snow  through  which  it  rolls.  Nothing  that  is  once  experienced 
is  ever  lost;  and  what  we  call  ((forgetting))  is  only  the  inability  to  bring 
the  unconscious  into  consciousness. 

How  is  our  perceptual  consciousness  related  to  this  system  of  endur- 
ing memories?  Perceptual  consciousness,  Bergson  tells  us,  is  only  the 
fighting  edge  of  the  real  self;  or  better,  it  is  the  surface  of  contact 
between  the  spirit  of  man  and  the  world  in  which  man  lives.  We  could, 
no  more  identify  the  self  with  conscious  experience  than  we  could 
identify  a  solid  with  one  of  its  sides. 

How  is  the  brain  related  to  the  true  self  of  memory?  The  answer 
usually  given  is  to  the  effect  that  memories,  like  other  aspects  of  mind, 
are  in  the  brain  or  at  least  dependent  upon  it,  and  explainable  either  as 
specific  modifications  of  the  cerebral  substance  or  as  associative  paths 
of  conduction  between  the  Various  cerebral  centres.  Bergson  answers 
quite  differently.  For  him,  the  brain  is  in  no  sense  the  container  of 
memory  but  rather  is  it  a  bridge  connecting  the  realm  of  spiritual 
memory  with  the  realm  of  bodily  action.  The  memories  constituting 
our  spirit  can  exist  without  the  brain,  but  they  cannot  act  without  the 
brain.  And  as  memory  is  the  stuff  of  life,  and  therefore  dynamic  in 
character,  it  is  constantly  pressing,  as  it  were,  upon  the  brain  in  order 
to  express  itself  on  the  plane  of  perceptual  consciousness.  The  extent  to 
which  this  immaterial  and  unconscious  mind  can  realize  its  creative 
activity  will  depend  upon  the  condition  of  the  brain  and  its  relation  to 
the  other  physical  objects  outside  the  body.  During  waking  life  the 
mind  will  modify  and  control  the  perceptual  responses  of  the  body;  all 
intelligent  beings  react  to  the  present  in  the  light  of  the  past  experience. 
But  during  sleep,  when  the  brain  is  deaf  to  the  solicitations  of  the  outer 
world,  the  inner  voice  can  be  heard  more  clearly;  and  in  the  imagery  of 
the  dream  we  shall  find  expressed  the  unsatisfied  needs  and  interests  of 
the  unconscious  self.  In  his  theory  of  dreams  Bergson  is  in  accord  with 
Dr.  Sigmund  Freud,  though  he  does  not  attach  that  exclusive  impor- 
tance to  sex  desires  which  the  great  Austrian,  on  the  basis  of  his  extensive 
clinical  observations,  believes  to  be  justified. 

Thus  Bergson's  psychology,  although  beginning  with  a  behavioristic 
interpretation  of  perception,  ends  in  a  dualism  of  mind  and  body. 
This  dualism,  which  resembles  that  of  Descartes,  the  founder  of  French 
philosophy,  is  based  upon  the  impossibility  of  explaining  in  physical 


iSoof  HENRI    LOUIS    BERGSON 

terms  of  brain  action  that  endurance  of  the  past  which  is  expressed  in 
memory.  The  theory  is  in  keeping  with  the  religious  conception  of 
human  personality  and  its  survival  of  death;  for  it  allows  us  to  explain 
the  apparent  deterioration  of  mental  life  which  accompanies  the  disease 
and  decay  of  the  brain  as  due,  not  to  a  real  destruction  of  the  mind  itself, 
but  only  to  a  destruction  of  the  organ  by  which  the  mind  comes  into 
experiential  contact  with  physical  objects. 

The  weak  point  of  Bergson's  dualism  is  the  weak  point  of  all  dualism, 
—  namely,  the  difficulty  of  conceiving  how  a  purely  immaterial  being 
could  exist,  and  the  manner  in  which,  having  no  position  in  space,  it 
could  be  causally  related  to  the  material  brain. 

in.  Biological:  The  Life-Force  and  its  Evolution. —  When  Bergson  turns 
to  the  problem  of  evolution,  he  finds  himself  confronted  with  two 
very  ancient  theories,  neither  of  which  appeals  to  him  as  satisfac- 
tory. These  theories,  which  concern  the  nature  of  the  world-process, 
are  known  as  ((idealism))  and  ((materialism,))  or,  with  more  precision,  as 
((teleology))  and  ((mechanism.))  The  teleologist  holds  that  the  world's 
evolution  is  the  working  out  of  a  plan  that  pre-existed  in  the  mind  of 
God.  The  mechanist,  on  the  other  hand,  holds  that  all  that  happens  in 
nature,  including  both  the  development  of  individual  life  and  the  evolu- 
tion of  life  in  the  species,  happens  blindly,  without  purpose  or  foresight, 
and  in  accordance. with  the  same  purely  mechanical  laws  which  suffice 
to  explain  the  inorganic  phenomena  of  physics  and  chemistry. 

The  first  or  teleological  theory  is  criticized  by  Bergson  as  follows: 
If  the  entire  evolutionary  process  pre-existed  as  a  plan  in  the  mind  of 
God,  the  relation  of  higher  species  to  lower  would  constitute  the  same 
sort  of  problem,  and  would  generate  the  same  explanations  as  at  present. 
The  only  difference  would  be  a  change  of  scene  from  the  earth  to  the 
mind  of  God,  and  a  change  of  name  from  biology  to  divine  psychology. 
Moreover  the  temporal  process  itself  would  be  meaningless  if  evolution 
were  a  mere  repetition  of  a  pre-existing  reality.  Time  is  real,  and,  as 
real,  it  must  make  a  difference  to  things  —  which  means  that  it  must 
bring  into  being  genuine  novelties.  In  a  true  time-process  the  future 
cannot  have  pre-existed  in  the  past,  even  as  a  potentiality.  Thus  does 
Bergson,  in  this  brief  but  curiously  penetrating  criticism,  dispose  of  the 
teleological  conception  of  evolution. 

His  criticism  of  the  mechanistic  theory  is  empirical  and  inductive 
rather  than  deductive  and  dialectical.  He  brings  together  numerous 
instances  of  evolution  which  seem  impossible  to  account  for  on  the 
present  Darwinian  theory  according  to  which  life  advances  blindly 
by  the  principle  of  natural  selection  alone,  and  every  useful  organ  and 
instinct  is  regarded  as  built  up  out  of  an  accumulation  of  minute  varia- 
tions which  originated  accidentally,  and  which  have  been  preserved 
because    they    enable   the    animal    possessing   them    to   survive    in    the 


HENRI    LOUIS    BERGSON  l8oog 

struggle  for  existence.  Turning  from  criticism  to  construction,  Bergson 
argues  that  there  are  many  facts  connected  with  the  growth  and  be- 
havior of  the  individual  animal,  and  also  with  the  development  of  new 
and  higher  species,  which  indicate  the  working  of  an  elan  vital  or  life- 
spirit.  This  life-spirit  is  neither  stone-blind,  like  the  atoms  of  the 
materialist,  nor  all-seeing,  like  the  God  of  the  idealist,  but  intermediate 
in  wisdom  and  power.  It  gropes  its  way  dimly  outward  and  upward 
through  matter.  For  this  reason  the  specific  fot-m  of  a  living  organism 
will  always  be  a  composite  product  of  two  factors,  (i)  the  life-force 
itself  and  its  needs  or  interests,  and  (2)  the  particular  form  of  matter 
available  to  the  life-force.  The  original  source  of  vital  activity  thus 
becomes  split  up  into  increasingly  many  forms  and  individuals,  all  of 
which,  however,  because  of  their  common  origin,  retain  a  certain  sym- 
pathy and  community  of  nature.  One  current  of  life,  for  example, 
seizes  upon  the  material  of  chlorophyl,  and  by  virtue  of  that  substance 
becomes  able  to  derive  its  food  directly  from  the  air  and  from  the  soil 
in  which  it  takes  root;  and  so  the  vegetable  kingdom  is  formed.  Other 
streams  of  the  life-current  utilize  the  type  of  matter  with  which  they  are 
confronted  to  form  organs  of  locomotion  by  means  of  which  they  can 
pursue  their  food  from  place  to  place;  and  so  the  animal  kingdom  is 
formed.  Of  the  animals,  some  develop  the  material  presented  to  them 
in  such  a  way  as  to  form  in  their  own  bodies  nerve-mechanisms  by  which 
they  perform  unerringly  and,  as  it  were,  intuitively  many  actions  which 
further  the  life  of  their  species;  these  are  such  animals  as  the  bees,  and 
in  them  instinct  reaches  its  highest  perfection.  In  other  animals, 
however,  the  life-force  experiments  with  a  more  plastic  and  more 
centralized  nervous  system,  in  which  the  unerring  and  somewhat  un- 
varying instincts  are  replaced  by  variability  of  adjustment  and  the 
ability  to  profit  by  individual  experience;  this  line,  developing  through 
the  vertebrates,  culminates  in  man,  whose  variability  is  so  great  that 
he  can  make  from  the  matter  outside  of  his  body  tools  to  accomplish  his 
needs.  And  it  is  because  of  this  tool-making  faculty  that  we  call  him 
not  merely  intelligent  but  rational. 

Thus,  according  to  Bergson,  the  useful  variations  in  the  way  of 
sense-organs,  instincts,  and  intelligence  (by  the  accumulation  of  which 
life  evolves  from  lower  to  higher  forms)  are  neither  the  result  of  germinal 
accident  plus  natural  selection  as  the  neo-Darwinians  claim,  nor  of 
conscious  effort  and  design  upon  the  part  of  the  individual,  as  is  main- 
tained by  the  neo-Lamarckians,  but  rather  are  they  the  expression, 
unforeseen  and  yet  purposive  and  harmonious,  of  the  needs  and  interests 
of  the  life-force  operating  upon  the  matter  surrounding  it. 

In  his  vitalistic  biology  as  in  his  dualistic  psychology,  Bergson  is 
strong  in  his  destructive  criticism  of  current  theories,  and  original  and 
stimulating  in  his  constructive  suggestions.      He  gives  us  the  conception 


l8ooh  HENRI    LOUIS    BERGSON 

of  a  life-force  struggling  against  matter's  tendency  to  fixity  and  equi- 
librium, groping  its  way  upward  towards  more  and  more  perfect  expres- 
sions of  the  freedom  and  mobility  which  is  its  essence,  and  experimenting 
now  with  one  form  and  again  with  another.  Though  there  remains  the 
difficulty,  inherent  in  all  dualism  and  vitalism,  in  conceiving  how  an 
immaterial  force  can  act  upon  a  material  body,  this  difficulty  by  no 
means  deprives  his  system  of  permanent  value  and  significance. 

rV.  Theological:  The  Religious  and  Ethical  Implications  of  Creative  Evolution. 
—  Every  individual  life,  every  species  of  life,  in  a  sense  even  matter 
itself,  is  derived  from  a  single  source,  one  great  original  impulse 
from  which  the  whole  world  proceeds.  This  source  of  life  may  well 
possess  something  of  the  unity  and  individuality  which  constitutes 
what  we  know  as  conscious  personality.  But  if  the  Origin  is  personal 
it  is  not  therefore  a  self-contained  substance  existing  behind  or  above 
the  world,  a  spectator  of  evolving  nature.  The  power  which  was  the 
transcendent  cause  is  now  the  immanent  essence  of  living  individuals, 
who  are  thus  at  once  the  creatures  of  and  the  participants  in  the  cosmic 
life.  Thus  the  world  is  not  merely  a  neo-Platonic  emanation  from  God, 
but  also  it  is  a  self-creative  evolution  of  God.  The  cosmic  life,  which  is 
found  in  its  unity  in  each  individual,  maintains  itself  in  some  measure 
distinct  from  its  multiple  forms  of  expression,  and  may  even  be  com- 
muned with  or  prayed  to  by  those  through  whom  it  flows.  And  yet, 
when  we  speak  of  life  in  its  universal  aspect  as  God,  we  must  recognize 
that  such  a  God  is  not  omniscient  in  the  sense  of  foreseeing  the  future; 
for  a  future  that  was  adequately  foreknown  would  be  already  realized, 
and  time  would  have  lost  its  significance.  The  Bergsonian  God  is  also 
lacking  in  omnipotence,  being  bound  by  the  past  which  he  has  created 
but  which  is  now  a  limiting  part  of  him.  Yet  on  the  other  hand,  if  God 
and  his  creatures  are  alike  in  being  limited  by  the  past,  they  are  also 
alike  in  being  free  as  to  the  future.  For  the  future  is  not  a  mysterious 
realm  towards  which  we  are  drifting,  and  in  which  strange  destinies  may 
lurk.  The  future  cannot  be  foreseen,  because  there  is  nothing  in  it  to 
foresee.  It  is  absolutely  empty  and  open,  and  will  be  filled  only  with 
what  we  choose  to  fill  it.  Life  universal  and  life  individuated,  God  and 
his  creatures,  are  comrades  in  an  absolute  venture,  creating  their  future 
as  they  go  and  possessed  of  a  power  and  a  freedom  that  is  limited  only 
by  their  own  past. 

It  is  such  a  religion,  if  religion  it  can  be  called,  which  appears  implicit 
in  Bergson's  teaching.  And  as  for  his  ethics,  likewise  implicit  rather 
than  expressed,  the  central  idea  would  seem  to  be  the  same  as  that  which 
I  have  attributed  to  his  religion,  — -  the  idea,  namely,  of  the  open  future. 
Life's  evolution  is  a  creation,  not  a  fulfillment.  It  makes  its  ideals  as  it 
goes.  If  we  still  seek  in  the  spirit  of  an  older  ethic  to  demand  of  Bergson 
an  answer  to  such  questions  as:  —  (i)   What  is  the  good  of  life,  what  is  it 


HENRI    LOUIS    BERG  SON  l8ooi 

for?  (2)  What  is  the  end  towards  which  the  whole  creation  moves? 
(3)  What  is  the  categorical  imperative  or  absolute  moral  law?  (4) 
What  is  sin?  It  seems  to  me  he  might  reply  as  follows:  —  (i)  The  good 
of  life  —  what  it  is  for  —  is  more  life,  and  more  abundant  life.  (2)  The 
end  towards  which  life  moves  and  strives  is  its  own  unendingness.  (3) 
The  categorical  imperative  or  absolute  moral  law  is  the  law  that  there 
shall  be  no  law  except  such  as  may  happen  to  serve  freedom,  and  may  be 
capable  of  being  instantly  revised  or  abandoned  when  it  has  ceased  to 
serve  freedom.  (4)  Sin  is  the  yielding  by  life  to  the  temptation  to 
become  fi.xed  by  habits,  legalized,  stereotyped.  The  vegetable  is  lower 
than  the  animal  because  it  has  let  itself  become  less  mobile,  less  efifortful, 
less  free.  For  the  same  reason  the  animals  protected  in  sluggishness 
by  their  heavy  shells  are  inferior;  likewise  those  who  have  chosen  the 
unerring  but  unvarying  efficiency  of  instinct  rather  than  the  erring  but 
more  adaptable  intelligence.  The  man  encrusted  and  dominated  by 
habits,  the  society  weighed  down  and  kept  safe  by  unchanging  laws  and 
customs,  sin  also  against  the  life-spirit.  The  thing  that  should  be 
most  precious  to  the  conscience,  and  which  God  or  nature  has  most  at 
heart,  is  the  unending  increase  of  free  and  varied  life  for  all. 

Conclusion.  —  There  is  a  large  and  increasing  class  of  people  through- 
out the  world  whose  minds  are  unable  to  accept  the  idealism  of  the 
traditional  religions  and  whose  hearts  are  reluctant  to  accept  the  materi- 
alism of  modern  science.  To  such  as  these  Bergson  must  be  the  supreme 
prophet  of  the  present  day.  His  philosophy,  though  daringly  original, 
is  neither  anti-scientific  nor  anti-religious.  It  reveals  a  new  apprecia- 
tion of  the  meaning  and  promise  of  evolving  nature,  and  a  new  sense  of 
the  freedom  and  power  of  human  life. 

Bibliographical  Note.  There  is  an  excellent  bibliography  in 
(The  Ethical  Implications  of  Bergson's  Philosophy)'  by  Una  Bernard 
Sait  (New  York,  1914).  To  this  should  be  added  a  few  addresses  and 
articles  since  the  beginning  of  the  War  collected  in  (The  Meaning  of  the 
War;  Life  and  the  Conflict  of  Matter)   (New  York,  1915). 


CREATIVE   EVOLUTION 

Passages  selected  from  the  book  under  that  title  translated  by  Arthur  Mitchell. 
Copyright  by  Henry  Holt  &  Co.  and  reprinted  by  their  permission. 

ALL  our  analyses  shov/  us,  in  life,  an  effort  to  remount  the  incline 
that  matter  descends.     In  that,  they  reveal  to  us  the  possibil- 
ity, the  necessity  even  of  a  process  the  inverse  of  materiality, 
creative  of  matter  by  its  interruption  alone.     The  life  that  evolves  on 
the  surface  of  our  planet  is  indeed  attached  to  matter.     If  it  were 


iSooj  HENRI    LOUIS    BERGSON 

pure  consciousness,  a  fortiori  if  it  were  supraconsciousness,  it  would  be 
pure  creative  activity.  In  fact,  it  is  riveted  to  an  organism  that 
subjects  it  to  the  general  laws  of  inert  matter.  But  everything 
happens  as  if  it  were  doing  its  utmost  to  set  itself  free  from  these  laws. 
It  has  not  the  power  to  reverse  the  direction  of  physical  changes,  such 
as  the  principle  of  Carnot  determines  it.  It  does,  however,  behave 
absolutely  as  a  force  would  behave  which,  left  to  itself,  would  work  in 
the  inverse  direction.  Incapable  of  stopping  the  course  of  material 
changes  downwards,  it  succeeds  in  retarding  it.  The  evolution  of  life 
really  continues,  as  we  have  shown,  an  initial  impulsion :  this  impulsion, 
which  has  determined  the  development  of  the  chlorophyllian  function 
in  the  plant  and  of  the  sensori-motor  system  in  the  animal,  brings  life 
to  more  and  more  efficient  acts  by  the  fabrication  and  use  of  more  and 
more  powerful  explosives.  Now,  what  do  these  explosives  represent 
if  not  a  storing-up  of  the  solar  energy,  the  degradation  of  which  energy 
is  thus  provisionally  suspended  on  some  of  the  points  where  it  was  being 
poured  forth  ?  The  usable  energy  which  the  explosive  conceals  will  be 
expended,  of  course,  at  the  moment  of  the  explosion;  but  it  would 
have  been  expended  sooner  if  an  organism  had  not  happened  to  be 
there  to  arrest  its  dissipation,  in  order  to  retain  it  and  save  it  up.  As 
we  see  it  to-day,  at  the  point  to  which  it  was  brought  by  a  scission  of 
the  mutually  complementary  tendencies  which  it  contained  within 
itself,  life  is  entirely  dependent  on  the  chlorophyllian  function  of  the 
plant.  This  means  that,  looked  at  in  its  initial  impulsion,  before  any 
scission,  life  was  a  tendency  to  accumulate  in  a  reservoir,  as  do  es- 
pecially the  green  parts  of  vegetables,  with  a  view  to  an  instantaneous 
effective  discharge,  like  that  which  an  animal  brings  about,  something 
that  would  have  otherwise  flowed  away.  It  is  like  an  effort  to  raise 
the  weight  which  falls.  True,  it  succeeds  only  in  retarding  the  fall. 
But  at  least  it  can  give  us  an  idea  of  what  the  raising  of  the  weight  was. 
Let  us  imagine  a  vessel  full  of  steam  at  a  high  pressure,  and  here 
and  there  in  its  sides  a  crack  through  which  the  steam  is  escaping  in  a 
jet.  The  steam  thrown  into  the  air  is  nearly  all  condensed  into  little 
drops  which  fall  back,  and  this  condensation  and  this  fall  represent 
simply  the  loss  of  something,  an  interruption,  a  deficit.  But  a  small 
part  of  the  jet  of  steam  subsists,  uncondensed,  for  some  seconds;  it  is 
making  an  effort  to  raise  the  drops  which  are  falling;  it  succeeds  at 
most  in  retarding  their  fall.  So,  from  an  immense  reservoir  of  life, 
jets  must  be  gushing  out  unceasingly,  of  which  each,  falling  back,  is  a 
world.  The  evolution  of  living  species  within  this  world  represents 
what  subsists  of  the  primitive  direction  of  the  original  jet,  and  of  an 


HENRI    LOUIS    BERGSON  l8ook 

impulsion  which  continues  itself  in  a  direction  the  inverse  of  material- 
ity. But  let  us  not  carry  too  far  this  comparison.  It  gives  us  but  a 
feeble  and  even  deceptive  image  of  reality,  for  the  crack,  the  jet  of 
steam,  the  forming  of  the  drops,  are  determined  necessarily,  whereas 
the  creation  of  a  world  is  a  free  act,  and  the  life  within  the  material 
world  participates  in  this  liberty.  Let  us  think  rather  of  an  action 
like  that  of  raising  the  arm;  then  let  us  suppose  that  the  arm,  left  to 
itself,  falls  back,  and  yet  that  there  subsists  in  it,  striving  to  raise  it 
up  again,  something  of  the  will  that  animates  it.  In  this  image  of  a 
creative  action  which  unmakes  itself  we  have  already  a  more  exact 
representation  of  matter.  In  vital  activity  we  see,  then,  that  which 
subsists  of  the  direct  movement  of  the  inverted  movement,  a  reality 
which  is  making  itself  in  a  reality  which  is  unmaking  itself. 

Everything  is  obscure  in  the  idea  of  creation  if  we  think  of  things 
which  are  created  and  a  thing  which  creates,  as  we  habitually  do,  as  the 
understanding  cannot  help  doing.  We  shall  show  the  origin  of  this 
illusion  in  our  next  chapter.  It  is  natural  to  our  intellect,  whose 
function  is  essentially  practical,  made  to  present  to  us  things  and 
states  rather  than  changes  and  acts.  But  things  and  states  are  only 
views,  taken  by  our  mind,  of  becoming.  There  are  no  things,  there 
are  only  actions.  More  particularly,  if  I  consider  the  world  in  which 
we  live,  I  find  that  the  automatic  and  strictly  determined  evolution 
of  this  well-knit  whole  is  action  which  is  unmaking  itself,  and  that  the 
unforeseen  forms  which  life  cuts  out  in  it,  forms  capable  of  being 
themselves  prolonged  into  unforeseen  movements,  represent  the  ac- 
tion that  is  making  itself.  Now,  I  have  every  reason  to  believe  that 
the  other  worlds  are  analogous  to  ours,  that  things  happen  there  in 
the  same  way.  And  I  know  they  were  not  all  constructed  at  the  same 
time,  since  observation  shows  me,  even  to-day,  nebulae  in  course  of 
concentration.  Now,  if  the  same  kind  of  action  is  going  on  every- 
where, whether  it  is  that  which  is  unmaking  itself  or  whether  it  is  that 
which  is  striving  to  remake  itself,  I  simply  express  this  probable 
similitude  when  I  speak  of  a  centre  from  which  worlds  shoot  out  like 
rockets  in  a  fireworks  display  —  provided,  however,  that  I  do  not 
present  this  centre  as  a  thing,  but  as  a  continuity  of  shooting  out.' 
God,  thus  defined,  has  nothing  of  the  already  made;  he  is  unceasing 
life,  action,  freedom.  Creation,  so  conceived,  is  not  a  mystery;  we 
experience  it  in  ourselves  when  we  act  freely.  That  new  things  can 
join  things  already  existing  is  absurd,  no  doubt,  since  the  thing  results 
from  a  solidification  performed  by  our  tmderstanding,  and  there  are 
never  any  things  other  than  those  that  the  understanding  has  thus 


I800l  HENRI    LOUIS    BERG  SON 

constituted.  To  speak  of  things  creating  themselves  would  therefore 
amount  to  saying  that  the  understanding  presents  to  itself  more  than 
it  presents  to  itself  —  a  self-contradictory  affirmation,  an  empty  and 
vain  idea.  But  that  action  increases  as  it  goes  on,  that  it  creates  in 
the  measure  of  its  advance,  is  what  each  of  us  finds  when  he  watches 
himself  act.  Things  are  constituted  by  the  instantaneous  cut  which 
the  understanding  practices,  at  a  given  moment,  on  a  flux  of  this  kind, 
and  what  is  mysterious  when  we  compare  the  cuts  together  becomes 
clear  when  we  relate  them  to  the  flux. 


So  that  all  life,  animal  and  vegetable,  seems  in  its  essence  like  an 
effort  to  accumulate  energy  and  then  to  let  it  flow  into  flexible  channels, 
changeable  in  shape,  at  the  end  of  which  it  will,  accomplish  infinitely 
varied  kinds  of  work.  That  is  what  the  vital  impetus  {elan  vital), 
passing  through  matter,  would  fain  do  all  at  once.  It  would  succeed, 
no  doubt,  if  its  power  were  unlimited,  or  if  some  reinforcement  could 
come  to  it  from  without.  But  the  impetus  is  finite,  and  it  has  been 
given  once  for  all.  It  cannot  overcome  all  obstacles.  The  movement 
it  starts  is  sometimes  turned  aside,  sometimes  divided,  always  opposed; 
and  the  evolution  of  the  organized  world  is  the  unrolling  of  this  conflict. 


For  life  and  its  evolution,  two  things  only  are  necessary:  (i)  a 
gradual  accumulation  of  energy;  (2)  an  elastic  canalization  of  this 
energy  in  variable  and  indeterminable  directions,  at  the  end  of  which 
are  free  acts. 

This  twofold  result  has  been  obtained  in  a  particular  way  on  our 
planet.  But  it  might  have  been  obtained  by  entirely  different  means. 
It  was  not  necessary  that  life  should  fix  its  choice  mainly  upon  the 
carbon  of  carbonic  acid.  What  was  essential  for  it  was  to  store  solar 
energy;  but,  instead  of  asking  the  sun  to  separate,  for  instance,  atoms 
of  oxygen  and  carbon,  it  might  (theoretically  at  least,  and  apart  from 
■practical  difficulties  possibly  insurmountable)  have  put  forth  other 
chemical  elements,  which  would  then  have  had  to  be  associated  or  dis- 
sociated by  entirely  different  physical  means.  And  if  the  clement 
characteristic  of  the  substances  that  supply  energy  to  the  organism 
had  been  other  than  carbon,  the  clement  characteristic  of  the  plastic 
substances  would  probably  have  been  other  than  nitrogen,  and  the 
chemistry  of  living  bodies  would  then  have  been  radically  different 


HENRI    LOUIS    BERGSON  l8oom 

from  what  it  is.  The  result  would  have  been  living  forms  without 
any  analogy  to  those  we  know,  whose  anatomy  would  have  been 
different,  whose  physiology  also  would  have  been  different.  Alone 
the  sensori-motor  function  would  have  been  preserved,  if  not  in  its 
mechanism,  at  least  in  its  effects.  It  is  therefore  probable  that  life 
goes  on  in  other  planets,  in  other  solar  systems  also,  under  forms  of 
which  we  have  no  idea,  in  physical  conditions  to  which  it  seems  to  us, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  our  physiology,  to  be  absolutely  opposed. 
If  its  essential  aim  is  to  catch  up  usable  energy  in  order  to  expend  it  in 
explosive  actions,  it  probably  chooses,  in  each  solar  system  and  on 
each  planet,  as  it  does  on  the  earth,  the  fittest  means  to  get  this  result 
in  the  circumstances  with  which  it  is  confronted.  That  is  at  least 
what  reasoning  by  analogy  leads  to,  and  we  use  analogy  the  wrong 
way  when  we  declare  life  to  be  impossible  wherever  the  circumstances 
with  which  it  is  confronted  are  other  than  those  on  the  earth.  The 
truth  is  that  life  is  possible  wherever  energy  descends  the  incline 
indicated  by  Carnot's  law  and  where  a  cause  of  inverse  direction  can 
retard  the  descent  —  that  is  to  say,  probably,  in  all  the  worlds  sus- 
pended from  all  the  stars.  We  go  further:  it  is  not  even  necessary  that 
life  should  be  concentrated  and  determined  in  organisms  properly  so 
called,  that  is,  in  definite  bodies  presenting  to  the  flow  of  energy  ready- 
made  though  elastic  canals.  It  can  be  conceived  (although  it  can 
hardly  be  imagined)  that  energy  might  be  saved  up,  and  then  expended 
on  varying  lines  running  across  a  matter  not  yet  solidified.  Every 
essential  of  life  would  still  be  there,  since  there  would  still  be  slow 
accumulation  of  energy  and  sudden  release.  There  would  hardly  be 
more  difference  between  this  vitality,  vague  and  formless,  and  the 
definite  vitality  we  know,  than  there  is,  in  our  psychical  life,  between 
the  state  of  dream  and  the  state  of  waking.  Such  may  have  been  the 
condition  of  life  in  our  nebula  before  the  condensation  of  matter  was 
complete,  if  it  be  true  that  life  springs  forward  at  the  very  moment 
when,  as  the  effect  of  an  inverse  movement,  the  nebular  matter 
appears. 

It  is  therefore  conceivable  that  life  might  have  assumed  a  totally 
different  outward  appearance  and  designed  forms  very  different  from 
those  we  know.  With  another  chemical  substratum,  in  other  physical 
conditions,  the  impulsion  would  have  remained  the  same,  but  it  would 
have  split  up  very  differently  in  course  of  progress;  and  the  whole 
would  have  traveled  another  road  —  whether  shorter  or  longer  who  can 
tell?  In  any  case,  in  the  entire  series  of  living^ beings  no  term  would 
have  been  what  it  now  is.     Now,  was  it  necessary  that  there  should 


iSoon  HENRI    LOUIS    BERGSON 

be  a  series,  or  terms?    Why  should  not  the  unique  impetus  have  been 
impressed  on  a  unique  body,  which  might  have  gone  on  evolving? 


If  our  anal3'sis  is  correct,  it  is  consciousness,  or  rather  supracon- 
sciousness,  that  is  at  the  origin  of  life.  Consciousness,  or  supra- 
consciousness,  is  the  name  for  the  rocket  whose  extinguished  fragments 
fall  back  as  matter;  consciousness,  again,  is  the  name  for  that  which 
subsists  of  the  rocket  itself,  passing  through  the  fragments  and  lighting 
them  up  into  organisms.  But  this  consciousness,  which  is  a  need  of 
creation,  is  made  manifest  to  itself  only  where  creation  is  possible. 
It  lies  dormant  when  life  is  condemned  to  automatism;  it  wakens  as 
soon  as  the  possibility  of  a  choice  is  restored.  That  is  why,  in  organisms 
unprovided  with  a  nervous  system,  it  varies  according  to  the  power  of 
locomotion  and  of  deformation  of  which  the  organism  disposes.  And 
in  animals  with  a  nervous  system,  it  is  proportional  to  the  complexity 
of  the  switchboard  on  which  the  paths  called  sensory  and  the  paths 
called  motor  intersect  —  that  is,  of  the  brain.  How  must  this  solidarity 
between  the  organism  and  consciousness  be  understood? 


The  consciousness  of  a  living  being,  as  we  have  tried  to  prove 
elsewhere,  is  inseparable  from  its  brain  in  the  sense  in  which  a  sharp 
knife  is. inseparable  from  its  edge:  the  brain  is  the  sharp  edge  by  which 
consciousness  cuts  into  the  compact  tissue  of  events,  but  the  brain  is 
no  more  coextensive  with  consciousness  than  the  edge  is  with  the  knife. 
Thus,  from  the  fact  that  two  brains,  like  that  of  the  ape  and  that  of  the 
man,  are  very  much  alike,  we  cannot  conclude  that  the  corresponding 
consciousnesses  are  comparable  or  commensurable. 

But  the  two  brains  may  perhaps  be  less  alike  than  we  suppose. 
How  can  we  help  being  struck  by  the  fact  that,  while  man  is  capable  of 
learning  any  sort  of  exercise,  of  constructing  any  sort  of  object,  in 
short  of  acquiring  any  kind  of  motor  habit  whatsoever,  the  faculty  of 
combining  new  movements  is  strictly  limited  in  the  best-endowed 
animal,  even  in  the  ape?  The  cerebral  characteristic  of  man  is  there. 
The  human  brain  is  made,  like  every  brain,  to  set  up  motor  mechan- 
isms and  to  enable  us  to  choose  among  them,  at  any  instant,  the  one 
we  shall  put  in  motion  by  the  pull  of  a  trigger.  But  it  differs  from 
other  brains  in  this,  that  the  number  of  mechanisms  it  can  set  up,  and 
consequently  the  choice  that  it  gives  as  to  which  among  them  shall  be 


HENRI    LOUIS    BERGSON  18000 

released,  is  unlimited.  Now,  from  the  limited  to  the  unlimited  there 
is  all  the  distance  between  the  closed  and  the  open.  It  is  not  a  differ- 
ence of  degree,  but  of  kind. 

Radical  therefore,  also,  is  the  difference  between  animal  conscious- 
ness, even  the  most  intelligent,  and  human  consciousness.  For  con- 
sciousness corresi^onds  exactly  to  the  living  being's  power  of  choice; 
it  is  co-extensive  with  the  fringe  of  possible  action  that  surrounds  the 
real  action:  consciousness  is  synonymous  with  invention  and  with 
freedom.  Now,  in  the  animal,  invention  Is  never  anything  but  a 
variation  on  the  theme  of  routine.  Shut  up  in  the  habits  of  the  species, 
it  succeeds,  no  doubt,  in  enlarging  them  by  its  individual  initiative; 
but  it  escapes  automatism  only  for  an  instant,  for  just  the  time  to 
create  a  new  automatism.  The  gates  of  its  prison  close  as  soon  as 
they  are  opened;  by  pulling  at  its  chain  it  succeeds  only  In  stretching  it. 
With  man,  consciousness  breaks  the  chain.  In  man,  and  In  man  alone, 
it  sets  itself  free.  The  whole  history  of  life  until  man  has  been  that  of 
the  effort  of  consciousness  to  raise  matter,  and  of  the  more  or  less 
complete  overwhelming  of  consciousness  by  the  matter  which  has 
fallen  back  on  it.  The  enterprise  was  paradoxical,  If,  indeed,  we  may 
speak  here  otherwise  than  by  metaphor  of  enterprise  and  of  effort. 
It  was  to  create  with  matter,  which  is  necessity  Itself,  an  Instrument  of 
freedom,  to  make  a  machine  which  should  triumph  over  mechanism, 
and  to  use  the  determinism  of  nature  to  pass  through  the  meshes  of  the 
net  which  this  very  determinism  had  spread.  But,  everywhere  except 
in  man,  consciousness  has  let  itself  be  caught  In  the  net  whose  meshes 
it  tried  to  pass  through :  it  has  remained  the  captive  of  the  mechanisms 
it  has  set  up.  Automatism,  which  It  tries  to  draw  in  the  direction  of 
freedom,  winds  about  it  and  drags  it  down.  It  has  not  the  power  to 
escape,  because  the  energy  it  has  provided  for  acts  is  almost  all  em- 
ployed in  maintaining  the  Infinitely  subtle  and  essentially  unstable 
equilibrium  into  which  it  has  brought  matter.  But  man  not  only 
maintains  his  machine,  he  succeeds  in  using  it  as  he  pleases.  Doubtless 
he  owes  this  to  the  superiority  of  his  brain,  which  enables  him  to  build 
an  unlimited  ntmiber  of  motor  mechanisms,  to  oppose  new  habits  to 
the  old  ones  unceasingly,  and,  by  dividing  automatism  against  itself, 
to  rule  It.  He  owes  it  to  his  language,  which  furnishes  consciousness 
with  an  immaterial  body  in  which  to  incarnate  itself  and  thus  exempts 
it  from  dwelling  exclusively  on  material  bodies,  whose  flux  would  soon 
drag  It  along  and  finally  swallow  It  up.  He  owes  It  to  social  life,  which 
stores  and  preserves  efforts  as  language  stores  thought,  fixes  thereby  a 
mean  level  to  which  individuals  must  raise  themselves  at  the  outset, 


l8oop  HENRI    LOUIS    BERGSON 

and  by  this  initial  stimulation  prevents  the  average  man  from  slumber- 
ing and  drives  the  superior  man  to  mount  still  higher.  But  our  brain, 
our  society,  and  our  language  are  only  the  external  and  various  signs 
of  one  and  the  same  internal  superiority.  They  tell,  each  after  its 
manner,  the  unique,  exceptional  success  which  life  has  won  at  a  given 
moment  of  its  evolution.  They  express  the  difference  of  kind,  and 
not  only  of  degree,  which  separates  man  from  the  rest  of  the  animal 
world.  They  let  us  guess  that,  while  at  the  end  of  the  vast  spring- 
board from  .which  life  has  taken  its  leap,  all  the  others  have  stepped 
down,  finding  the  cord  stretched  too  high,  man  alone  has  cleared  the 
obstacle. 

It  is  in  this  quite  special  sense  that  man  is  the  « term  »  and  the 
(( end ))  of  evolution.  Life,  we  have  said,  transcends  finality  as  it 
transcends  the  other  categories.  It  is  essentially  a  current  sent 
through  matter,  drawing  from  it  what  it  can.  There  has  not,  there- 
fore, properly  speaking,  been  any  project  or  plan.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  is  abundantly  evident  that  the  rest  of  nature  is  not  for  the 
sake  of  man:  we  struggle  like  the  other  species,  we  have  struggled 
against  other  species.  Moreover,  if  the  evolution  of  life  had  en- 
countered other  accidents  in  its  course,  if,  thereby,  the  current  of  life 
had  been  otherwise  divided,  we  should  have  been,  physically  and 
morally,  far  different  from  what  we  are.  For  these  various  reasons 
it  would  be  wrong  to  regard  humanity,  such  as  we  have  it  before  our 
eyes,  as  pre-figured  in  the  evolutionary  movement.  It  cannot  even 
be  said  to  be  the  outcome  of  the  whole  of  evolution,  for  evolution 
has  been  accomplished  on  several  divergent  lines,  and  while  the 
human  species  is  at  the  end  of  one  of  them,  other  lines  have  been 
followed  with  other  species  at  their  end.  It  is  in  a  quite  different 
sense  that  we  hold  humanity  to  be  the  ground  of  evolution. 

From  our  point  of  view,  life  appears  in  its  entirety  as  an  immense 
wave  which,  starting  from  a  centre,  spreads  outwards,  and  which  on 
almost  the  whole  of  its  circumference  is  stopped  and  converted  into 
oscillation:  at  one  single  point  the  obstacle  has  been  forced,  the  im- 
pulsion has  passed  freely.  It  is  this  freedom  that  the  human  form 
registers.  Everywhere  but  in  man,  consciousness  has  had  to  come  to  a 
stand;  in  man  alone  it  has  kept  on  its  way.  Man,  then,  continues  the 
vital  movement  indefinitely,  although  he  does  not  draw  along  with 
him  all  that  life  carries  in  itself.  On  other  lines  of  evolution  there 
have  traveled  other  tendencies  which  life  implied,  and  of  which,  since 
everything  interpenetrates,  man,  has,  doubtless,  kept  something,  but 
of  which  he  has  kept  only  very  little.     It  is  as  if  a  vague  and  formless 


HENRI    LOUIS    BERGSON  l8ooq 

being,  whom  we  may  call,  as  we  will,  man  or  superman,  had  sought  to 
realize  himself,  and  had  succeeded  only  by  abandoning  a  part  of  himself 
on  the  way.  The  losses  are  represented  by  the  rest  of  the  animal  world, 
and  even  by  the  vegetable  world,  at  least  in  what  these  have  that  is 
positive  and  above  the  accidents  of  evolution. 

From  this  point  of  view,  the  discordances  of  which  nature  offers  us 
the  spectacle  are  singularly  weakened.  The  organized  world  as  a 
whole  becomes  as  the  soil  on  which  was  to  grow  either  man  himself  or  a 
being  who  morally  must  resemble  him.  The  animals,  however  distant 
they  may  be  from  our  species,  however  hostile  to  it,  have  none  the  less 
been  useful  traveling  companions,  on  whom  consciousness  has  un- 
loaded whatever  encumbrances  it  was  dragging  along,  and  who  have 
enabled  it  to  rise,  in  man,  to  heights  from  which  it  sees  an  unlimited 
horizon  open  again  before  it. 

It  is  true  that  it  has  not  only  abandoned  cumbersome  baggage  on 
the  way :  it  has  also  had  to  give  up  valuable  goods.  Consciousness,  in 
man,  is  pre-eminently  intellect.  It  might  have  been,  it  ought,  so  it 
seems,  to  have  been  also  intuition.  Intuition  and  intellect  represent 
two  opposite  directions  of  the  work  of  consciousness:  intuition  goes 
in  the  very  direction  of  life,  intellect  goes  in  the  inverse  direction,  and 
thus  finds  itself  naturally  in  accordance  with  the  movement  of  matter. 
A  complete  and  perfect  humanity  would  be  that  in  which  these  two 
forms  of  conscious  activity  should  attain  their  full  development.  And, 
between  this  humanity  and  o-urs,  we  may  conceive  any  number  of 
possible  stages,  corresponding  to  all  the  degrees  imaginable  of  intelli- 
gence and  of  intuition.  In  this  lies  the  part  of  contingency  in  the 
mental  structure  of  our  species.  A  different  evolution  might  have  led 
to  a  himianity  either  more  intellectual  still  or  more  intuitive.  In  the 
humanity  of  which  we  are  a  part,  intuition  is,  in  fact,  almost  com- 
pletely sacrificed  to  intellect.  It  seems  that  to  conquer  matter,  and 
to  reconquer  its  own  self,  consciousness  has  had  to  exhaust  the  best 
part  of  its  power.  This  conquest,  in  the  particular  conditions  in 
w^hich  it  has  been  accomplished,  has  required  that  consciousness  should 
adapt  itself  to  the  habits  of  matter  and  concentrate  all  its  attention  on 
them,  in  fact  determine  itself  more  especially  as  intellect.  Intuition 
is  there,  however,  but  vague  and  above  all  discontinuous.  It  is  a 
lamp  almost  extinguished,  which  only  glimmers  now  and  then,  for  a 
few  moments  at  most.  But  it  glimmers  wherever  a  vital  interest 
is  at  stake.  On  our  personality,  on  our  liberty,  on  the  place  we 
occupy  in  the  whole  of  nature,  on  our  origin  and  perhaps  also  on 
our    destiny,    it  throws   a   light,   feeble   and   vacillating,   but  which 


iSoor  HENRI    LOUIS    BERGSOX 

none  the  less  pierces  the  darkness  of  the  night  in  which  the  intellect 
leaves  us. 

These  fleeting  intuitions,  which  light  up  their  object  only  at  distant 
intervals,  philosophy  ought  to  seize,  first  to  sustain  them,  then  to 
expand  them  and  so  unite  them  together.  The  more  it  advances  in 
this  work,  the  more  will  it  perceive  that  intuition  is  mind  itself,  and,  in 
a  certain  sense,  life  itself:  the  intellect  has  been  cut  out  of  it  by  a 
process  resembling  that  which  has  generated  matter.  Thus  is  re- 
vealed the  unity  of  the  spiritual  life.  We  recognize  it  only  when  we 
place  ourselves  in  intuition  in  order  to  go  from  intuition  to  the  intellect, 
for  from  the  intellect  we  shall  never  pass  to  intuition. 

Philosophy  introduces  us  thus  into  the  spiritual  life.  And  it  shows 
us  at  the  same  time  the  relation  of  the  life  of  the  spirit  to  that  of  the 
body.  The  great  error  of  the  doctrines  on  the  sj^irit  has  been  the 
idea  that  by  isolating  the  spiritual  life  from  all  the  rest,  by  suspending 
it  in  space  as  high  as  possible  above  the  earth,  they  were  placing  it 
beyond  attack,  as  if  they  were  not  thereby  simply  exposing  it  to  be 
taken  as  an  effect  of  mirage!  Certainly  they  are  right  to  listen  to 
conscience  when  conscience  affirms  human  freedom;  but  the  intellect 
is  there,  which  says  that  the  cause  determines  its  effect,  that  like  con- 
ditions like,  that  all  is  repeated  and  all  is  given.  They  are  right  to 
believe  in  the  absolute  reality  of  the  person  and  in  his  independence 
toward  matter;  but  science  is  there,  which  shows  the  interdependence 
of  conscious  life  and  cerebral  activity.  They  are  right  to  attribute  to 
man  a  privileged  place  in  nature,  to  hold  that  the  distance  is  infinite 
between  the  animal  and  man;  but  the  history  of  life  Is  there,  which 
makes  us  witness  the  genesis  of  species  by  gradual  transformation,  and 
seems  thus  to  reintegrate  man  in  animallty.  When  a  strong  instinct 
assures  the  probability  of  personal  survival,  they  are  right  not  to  close 
their  ears  to  its  voice ;  but  if  there  exist  ((souls))  capable  of  independent 
life,  whence  do  they  come?  When,  how,  and  why  do  they  enter  into 
this  body  which  we  see  arise,  quite  naturally,  from  a  mixed  cell  derived 
from  the  bodies  of  its  two  parents?  All  these  questions  will  remain 
unanswered,  a  philosophy  of  Intuition  will  be  a  negation  of  science, 
will  be  sooner  or  later  swept  away  by  science,  if  it  does  not  resolve  to 
see  the  life  of  the  body  just  where  It  really  is,  on  the  road  that  leads  to 
the  life  of  the  spirit.  But  It  will  then  no  longer  have  to  do  with  definite 
living  beings.  Life  as  a  whole,  from  the  initial  Impulsion  that  thrust 
it  Into  the  world,  will  appear  as  a  wave  which  rises,  and  which  is 
opposed  by  the  descending  movement  of  matter.  On  the  greater  part 
of  its  surface,  at  different  heights,  the  current  is  converted  by  matter 


HENRI    LOUIS    BERGSON  180OS 

into  a  vortex.  At  one  point  alone  it  passes  freely,  dragging  with  it  the 
obstacle  which  will  weigh  on  its  progress  but  will  not  stop  it.  At  this 
point  is  humanit}-;  it  is  our  privileged  situation.  On  the  other  hand, 
this  rising  wave  is  consciousness,  and,  like  all  consciousness,  it  includes 
potentialities  without  number  which  interpenetrate  and  to  which 
conseqticntly  neither  the  category  of  unity  nor  that  of  multiplicity  is 
appropriate,  made  as  they  both  are  for  inert  matter.  The  matter 
that  it  bears  along  with  it,  and  in  the  interstices  of  which  it  inserts  itself, 
alone  can  divide  it  into  distinct  individualities.  On  flows  the  current, 
running  through  human  generations,  subdividing  itself  into  indi- 
viduals. This  subdivision  was  vaguely  indicated  in  it,  but  could  not 
have  been  made  clear  without  matter.  Thus  souls  are  continually 
being  created,  which,  nevertheless,  in  a  certain  sense,  pre-existed. 
They  are  nothing  else  than  the  little  rills  into  which  the  great  river  of 
life  divides  itself,  flowing  through  the  body  of  humanity.  The  move- 
ment of  the  stream  is  distinct  from  the  river  bed,  although  it  must 
adopt  its  winding  course.  Consciousness  is  distinct  from  the  organism 
it  animates,  although  it  must  undergo  its  vicissitudes.  As  the  possible 
actions  which  a  state  of  consciousness  indicates  are  at  every  instant 
beginning  to  be  carried  out  in  the  nervous  centres,  the  brain  underlies 
at  every  instant  the  motor  indications  of  the  state  of  consciousness; 
but  the  interdependency  of  consciousness  and  brain  is  limited  to  this; 
the  destiny  of  consciousness  is  not  bound  up  on  that  account  with  the 
destiny  of  cerebral  matter.  Finally,  consciousness  is  essentially  free; 
it  is  freedom  itself;  but  it  cannot  pass  through  matter  without  settling 
on  it,  without  adapting  itself  to  it:  this  adaptation  is  what  we  call 
intellectuality;  and  the  intellect,  turning  itself  back  toward  active, 
that  is  to  say  free,  consciousness,  naturally  makes  it  enter  into  the 
conceptual  forms  into  which  it  is  accustomed  to  see  matter  fit.  It 
will  therefore  always  perceive  freedom  in  the  form  of  necessity;  it  will 
always  neglect  the  part  of  novelty  or  of  creation  inherent  in  the  free 
act;  it  will  always  substitute  for  action  itself  an  imitation  artificial, 
approximative,  obtained  by  compounding  the  old  with  the  old  and 
the  same  with  the  same.  Thus,  to  the  eyes  of  a  philosophy  that 
attempts  to  reabsorb  intellect  in  intuition,  many  difficulties  vanish  or 
become  light.  But  such  a  doctrine  does  not  only  facilitate  speculation; 
it  gives  us  also  more  power  to  act  and  to  live.  For,  with  it,  we  feel 
ourselves  no  longer  isolated  in  humanity,  humanity  no  longer  seems 
isolated  in  the  nature  that  it  dominates.  As  the  smallest  grain  of  dust 
is  bound  up  with  our  entire  solar  system,  drawn  along  with  it  in  that 
undivided  movement   of  descent  which   is  materiality  itself,   so   all 


I  Soot  HENRI    LOUIS    BERGSON 

organized  beings,  from  the  humblest  to  the  highest,  from  the  first 
origins  of  life  to  the  time  in  which  we  are,  and  in  all  places  as  in  all 
times,  do  but  evidence  a  single  impulsion,  the  inverse  of  the  movement 
of  matter,  and  in  itself  indivisible.  All  the  living  hold  together,  and 
all  yield  to  the  same  tremendous  push.  The  animal  takes  its  stand 
on  the  plant,  man  bestrides  animality,  and  the  whole  of  humanity,  in 
space  and  in  time,  is  one  immense  army  galloping  beside  and  before 
and  behind  each  of  us  in  an  overwhelming  charge,  able  to  beat  down 
every  resistance  and  clear  the  most  formidable  obstacles,  perhaps 
even  death. 


i8oi 


GEORGE   BERKELEY 

(1685-1753) 

)k\v  readers  in  the  United  States  are  unfamiliar  with  the  lines, 
« Westward  the  course  of  empire  takes  its  way.  '^  It  is 
vaguely  remembered  that  a  certain  Bishop  Berkeley  was 
the  author  of  a  treatise  on  tar-water.  There  is  moreover  a  general 
impression  that  this  Bishop  Berkeley  contended  for  the  unreality  of 
all  things  outside  of  his  own  mind,  and  now  and  then  some  recall 
Byron's  lines  — 

«When  Bishop  Berkeley  said  <  there  was  no  matter,> 
And  proved  it, — 'twas  no  matter  what  he  said.» 

• 

This  is  the  substance  of  the  popular  knowledge  of  one  of  the  pro- 
f oundest  thinkers  of  the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  —  the 
time  of  Shaftesbury  and  Locke,  of  Addison 
and  Steele,  of  Butler,  Pope,  and  Swift,  — 
one  of  the  most  fascinating  men  of  his 
day,  and  one  of  the  best  of  any  age. 
Beside,  or  rather  above,  Byron's  line  should 
be  placed  Pope's  tribute:  — 

«To  Berkeley,  every  virtue  under  Heaven. » 

Berkeley  was  born  in  Ireland,  probably 
at  Dysart  Castle  in  the  Valley  of  the  Nore, 
near  Kilkenny,  March  12,  1685.  The  fam- 
ily having  but  lately  come  into  Ireland, 
Berkeley  always  accounted  himself  an 
Englishman.  At  Kilkenny  School  he  met 
the  poet  Prior,  who  became  his  intimate  friend,  his  business  repre- 
sentative, and  his  most  regular  correspondent  for  life.  Swift  pre- 
ceded him  at  this  school  and  at  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  whither 
Berkeley  went  March  21,  1700,  being  then  fifteen  years  of  age.  Here 
as  at  Kilkenny  he  took  rank  much  beyond  his  years,  and  was  soon 
deep  in  philosophical  speculations. 

In  Professor  Eraser's  edition  of  the  <  Life  and  Works  of  Berkeley  ^ 
appears  a  <  Common-Place  Book,'  kept  during  the  Trinity  College 
terms,  and  full  of  most  remarkable  memoranda  for  a  youth  of  his 
years.  In  1709,  while  still  at  Trinity,  he  published  an  <  Essay 
toward  a  New  Theory  of  Vision,*  which  foreshadowed  imperfectly 
his   leading   ideas.      In   the   following  year  he  published  a  *  Treatise 


George  Berkeley 


jgo2  GEORGE   BERKELEY 

concerning  the  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge.*  Two  or  three 
years  later  he  went  to  London,  where  he  was  received  with  tinusiial 
favor  and  quickly  became  intimate  in  the  literary  circles  of  the  day. 
He  made  friends  everywhere,  being  attractive  in  all  ways,  young, 
handsome,  graceful,  fascinating  in  discourse,  enthusiastic,  and  full  of 
thought.  Swift  was  especially  impressed  by  him,  and  did  much  to 
further  his  fortunes. 

His  philosophical  conceptions  he  at  this  time  popularized  in 
<  Three  Dialogues  between  Hylas  and  Philonous,^  a  work  rated  by 
some    critics   as   at   the   head   of   its   class. 

Before  going  to  London,  Berkeley  had  been  made  a  Fellow  of 
Trinity,  had  been  appointed  to  various  college  offices,  and  had  taken 
orders.  He  remained  away  from  Dublin  for  about  eight  years,  on 
leave  frequently  extended,  writing  in  London,  and  traveling,  teach- 
ing, and  writing  on  the  Continent.  On  his  return  from  his  foreign 
travels  in  1720  or  1721,  he  found  society  completely  demoralized  by 
the  collapse  of  the  South  Sea  bubble.  He  was  much  depressed  by 
the  conditions  around  him,  and  sought  to  awaken  the  moral  sense 
of  the  people  by  ^  An  Essay  toward  Preventing  the  Ruin  of  Great 
Britain.'  Returning  to  Dublin  and  resuming  college  duties,  he  was 
shortly  made  Dean  of  Dromore,  and  then  Dean  of  Derry.  Hardly 
had  he  received  these  dignified  appointments  when  he  began  plan- 
ning to  rid  himself  of  them,  being  completely  absorbed  in  a  scheme 
for  a  University  in  the  Bermudas,  which  should  educate  scholars, 
teachers,  and  ministers  for  the  New  World,  to  which  his  hope 
turned.  To  this  scheme  he  devoted  himself  for  many  years.  A 
singular  occurrence,  which  released  him  from  pecuniary  cares,  en- 
abled him  to  give  his  time  as  well  as  his  heart  to  the  work.  Miss 
Vanhomrigh,  the  *■  Vanessa '  of  Swift,  upon  her  mother's  death,  left 
London,  and  went  to  live  in  Ireland,  to  be  near  her  beloved  Dean; 
and  there  she  was  informed  of  Swift's  marriage  to  <  Stella.'  •  The 
news  killed  her,  but  she  revoked  the  will  by  which  her  fortune  was 
bequeathed  to  Swift,  and  left  one-half  of  it,  or  about  £4,000,  to 
Berkeley,  whom  she  had  met  but  once.  He  must  have  <*  kept  an 
atmosphere,''  as  Bagehot  says  of  Francis  Horner. 

Going  to  London  on  fire  with  his  great  scheme,  prepared  to  resign 
his  deanery  and  cast  in  his  lot  with  that  of  the  proposed  University, 
Berkeley  wasted  years  in  the  effort  to  secure  a  charter  and  grant 
from  the  administration.  His  enthusiasm  and  his  fascinating  manners 
effected  much,  and  over  and  over  again  only  the  simplest  formalities 
seemed  necessary  to  success.  Only  the  will  of  Sir  Robert  Walpole 
stood  in  the  way,  but  Walpole's  will  sufficed.  At  last,  in  September, 
1728,  tired  of  waiting  at  court,  Berkeley,  who  had  just  married,  sailed 
with   three   or   four  friends,  including  the   artist   Smibert,  for  Rhode 


GEORGE   BERKELEY  1803 

Island,  intending  to  await  there  the  completion  of  his  grant,  and 
then  proceed  to  Bermuda.  He  bought  a  farm  near  Newport,  and 
built  a  house  which  he  called  Whitehall,  in  which  he  lived  for  about 
three  years,  leaving  a  tradition  of  a  benignant  but  retired  and  scho- 
lastic life.  Among  the  friends  who  were  here  drawn  to  him  was  the 
Rev.  Samuel  Johnson  of  Stratford,  afterward  the  first  President  of 
King's  (now  Columbia)  College,  with  whom  he  corresponded  during 
the  remainder  of  his  life,  and  through  whom  he  was  able  to  aid 
greatly  the  cause  of  education  in  America. 

The  Newport  life  was  idyllic.  Berkeley  wrote  home  that  the 
winters  were  cooler  than  those  of  the  South  of  Ireland,  but  not  worse 
than  he  had  known  in  Italy.  He  brought  over  a  good  library,  and 
read  and  wrote.  The  principal  work  of  this  period,  written  in  a 
romantic  cleft  in  the  rocks,  was  <Alciphron,  or  the  Minute  Philoso- 
pher,* in   seven  dialogues,   directed  especially  against  atheism. 

At  length,  through  Lord  Percival,  Berkeley  learned  that  Walpole 
would  not  allow  the  parliamentary  grant  of  £20,000  for  the  Bermuda 
College,  and  returned  to  England  at  the  close  of  1732.  His  White- 
hall estate  he  conveyed  to  Yale  College  for  the  maintenance  of 
certain  scholarships.  From  England  he  sent  over  nearly  a  thousand 
volumes  for  the  Yale  library,  the  best  collection  of  books  ever 
brought  at  one  time  to  America,  being  helped  in  the  undertaking  by 
some  of  the  Bermuda  subscribers.  A  little  later  he  sent  a  collection 
of  books  to  Harvard  College  also,  and  presented  a  valuable  organ  to 
Trinity  Church  in  Newport. 

Shortly  after  his  return,  Berkeley  was  appointed  Bishop  of  Cloyne, 
near  Cork  in  Ireland,  and  here  he  remained  for  about  eighteen  years. 
Although  a  recluse,  he  wrote  much,  and  he  kept  up  his  loving  rela- 
tions with  old  friends  who  still  survived.  He  had  several  children 
to  educate,  and  he  cultivated  music  and  painting.  He  attempted  to 
establish  manufactures,  and  to  cultivate  habits  of  industry  and  refine- 
ment among  the  people.  The  winter  of  1739  was  bitterly  cold.  This 
was  followed  by  general  want,  famine,  and  disease.  Berkeley  and  his 
family  lived  simply  and  gave  away  what  they  could  save.  Large  num- 
bers of  the  people  died  from  an  epidemic.  In  America  Berkeley's 
attention  had  been  drawn  to  the  medicinal  virtues  of  tar,  and  he 
experimented  successfully  with  tar-water  as  a  remedy.  Becoming 
more  and  more  convinced  of  its  value,  he  exploited  his  supposed  dis- 
covery with  his  usual  ardor,  writing  letters  and  essays,  and  at  length 
*■  A  Chain  of  Philosophical  Reflections  and  Enquiries  concerning  the 
Virtues  of  Tar-water  and  divers  other  subjects  connected  together  and 
arising  one  from  another.*  This  was  called  *Siris*  in  a  second  edition 
which  was  soon  demanded.  Beginning  with  the  use  of  tar-water  as 
a  remedy,  the  treatise  gradually  developed  into  the  treatment  of  the 


j8o4  GEORGE   BERKELEY 

largest  themes,  and  offered  the  ripest  fruits  of  the  Bishop's  phi- 
losophy. 

Berkeley's  system  was  neither  consistent  nor  complete,  but  much 
of  it  remains  sound.  In  brief,  he  contended  that  matter  has  no  inde- 
pendent existence,  but  is  an  idea  in  the  supreme  mind,  which  is 
realized  in  various  forms  by  the  human  mind.  Without  mind  noth- 
ing exists.  Cause  cannot  exist  except  as  it  rests  in  mind  and  will. 
All  so-called  physical  causes  are  merely  cases  of  constant  sequence 
of  phenomena.  Far  from  denying  the  reality  of  phenomena,  Berke- 
ley insists  upon  it ;  but  contends  that  reality  depends  upon  the  suprem- 
acy of  mind.  Abstract  matter  does  not  and  cannot  exist.  The  mind 
can  only  perceive  qualities  of  objects,  and  infers  the  existence  of  the 
objects  from  them;  or  as  a  modern  writer  tersely  puts  it,  <<  The  only 
thing  certain  is  mind.  Matter  is  a  doubtful  and  uncertain  inference 
of  the  human  intellect. '* 

The  essay  upon  Tar- water  attracted  great  attention.  The  •  good 
bishop  wrote  much  also  for  periodicals,, mainly  upon  practical  themes; 
and  in  The  Querist,  an  intermittent  journal,  considered  many  matters 
of  ethical  and  political  importance  to  the  country.  Though  a  bishop 
of  the  Established  Church,  he  lived  upon  the  most  friendly  terms 
with  his  Roman  Catholic  neighbors,  and  his  labors  were  highly  ap- 
preciated by  them. 

But  his  life  was  waning.  His  friends  had  passed  away,  he  had 
lost  several  children,  his  health  was  broken.  He  desired  to  retire  to 
Oxford  and  spend  the  remainder  of  his  life  in  scholarly  seclusion. 
He  asked  to  exchange  his  bishopric  for  a  canonry,  but  this  could  not 
be  permitted.  He  then  begged  to  be  allowed  to  resign  his  charge, 
but  the  king  replied  that  he  might  live  where  he  pleased,  but  that 
he  should  die  a  bishop  in  spite  of  himself.  In  August,  1752,  Bishop 
Berkeley  removed  himself,  his  wife,  his  daughter,  and  his  goods  to 
Oxford,  where  his  son  George  was  a  student;  and  here  on  the  four- 
teenth of  the  following  January,  as  he  was  resting  on  his  couch  by 
the  fireside  at  tea-time,  his  busy  brain  stopped  thinking,  and  his  kind 
heart  ceased  to  beat. 


GEORGE   BERKELEY  1805 


ON   THE    PROSPECT   OF 
PLANTING  ARTS  AND   LEARNING   IN  AMERICA 


T 


HE  Muse,  disgusted  at  an  age  and  clime 

Barren  of  every  glorious  theme, 
In  distant  lands  now  waits  a  better  time, 
Producing  subjects  worthy  fame: 

In  happy  climes,  where  from  the  genial  sun 
And  virgin  earth  such  scenes  ensue. 

The  force  of  art  by  nature  seems  outdone, 
And  fancied  beauties  by  the  true; 

In  happy  climes,  the  seat  of  innocence. 
Where  nature  guides  and  virtue  rules. 

Where  men  shall  not  impose  for  truth  and  sense 
The  pedantry  of  courts  and  schools: 

There  shall  be  sung  another  golden  age. 

The  rise  of  empire  and  of  arts, 
The  good  and  great  inspiring  epic  rage. 

The  wisest  heads  and  noblest  hearts. 

Not  such  as  Europe  breeds  in  her  decay; 

Such  as  she  bred  when  fresh  and  young, 
When  heavenly  flame  did  animate  her  clay. 

By  future  poets  shall  be  sung. 

Westward  the  course  of  empire  takes  its  way; 

The  four  first  Acts  already  past, 
A  fifth  shall  close  the  Drama  with  the  day. 

Time's  noblest  offspring  is  the  last. 


ESSAY   ON   TAR-WATER 
From  ''Siris> 

THE  seeds  of  things  seem  to  lie  latent  in  the  air,  ready  to 
appear  and  produce  their  kind,  whenever  they  light  on  a 
proper  matrix.  The  extremely  small  seeds  of  fern,  mosses, 
mushrooms,  and  some  other  plants,  are  concealed  and  wafted 
about  in  the  air,  every  part  whereof  seems  replete  with  seeds  01 
one  kind  or  other.  The  whole  atmosphere  seems  alive.  There 
is  everywhere  acid  to  corrode,  and  seed  to  engender.     Iron  will 


lSo6  GEORGE   BERKELEY 

rust,  and  mold  will  grow,  in  all  places.  Virgin  earth  becomes 
fertile,  crops  of  new  plants  ever  and  anon  show  themselves,  all 
which  demonstrate  the  air  to  be  a  common  seminary  and  recept- 
acle of  all  vivifying  principles.     .     . 

The  eye  by  long  use  comes  to  see,  even  in  the  darkest  cav- 
ern; and  there  is  no  subject  so  obscure,  but  we  may  discern 
some  glimpse  of  truth  by  long  poring  on  it.  Truth  is  the  cry  of 
all,  but  the  game  of  a  few.  Certainly  where  it  is  the  chief  pas- 
sion, it  doth  not  give  way  to  vulgar  cares  and  views;  nor  is  it 
contented  with  a  little  ardor  in  the  early  time  of  life;  active, 
perhaps,  to  pursue,  but  not  so  fit  to  weigh  and  revise.  He  that 
would  make  a  real  progress  in  knowledge,  must  dedicate  his  age 
as  well  as  youth,  the  later  growth,  as  well  as  first  fruits,  at  the 
altar  of  truth.     .     .     . 

As  the  nerves  are  instruments  of  sensation,  it  follows  that 
spasms  in  the  nerves  may  produce  all  symptoms,  and  therefore  a 
disorder  in  the  nervous  system  shall  imitate  all  distempers,  and 
occasion,  in  appearance,  an  asthma  for  instance,  a  pleurisy,  or  a 
fit  of  the  stone.  Now,  whatever  is  good  for  the  nerves  in  gen- 
eral is  good  against  all  such  symptoms.  But  tar-water,  as  it 
includes  in  an  eminent  degree  the  virtues  of  warm  giims  and 
resins,  is  of  great  use  for  comforting  and  strengthening  the 
nerves,  curing  twitches  in  the  nervous  fibres,  cramps  also,  and 
numbness  in  the  limbs,  removing  anxieties  and  promoting  sleep, 
in  all  which  cases  I  have  known  it  very  successful. 

This  safe  and  cheap  medicine  suits  all  circumstances  and  all 
constitutions,  operating  easily,  curing  without  disturbing,  raising 
the  spirits  without  depressing  them,  a  circumstance  that  deserves 
repeated  attention,  especially  in  these  climates,  where  strong 
liquors  so  fatally  and  so  frequently  produce  those  very  distresses 
they  are  designed  to  remedy;  and  if  I  am  not  misinformed,  even 
among  the  ladies  themselves,  who  are  truly  much  to  be  pitied. 
Their  condition  of  life  makes  them  a  prey  to  imaginary  woes, 
which  never  fail  to  grow  up  in  minds  unexercised  and  imem- 
ployed.  To  get  rid  of  these,  it  is  said,  there  arc  who  betake 
themselves  to  distilled  spirits.  And  it  is  not  improbable  they 
are  led  gradually  to  the  use  of  those  poisons  by  a  certain  com- 
plaisant pharmacy,  too  much  used  in  the  modem  practice,  palsy 
drops,  poppy  cordial,  plague  water,  and  such-like,  which  being 
in  truth  nothing  but  drams  disguised,  yet  coming  from  the 
apothecaries,  are  considered  only  as  medicines. 


GEORGE   BERKELEY  I 807 

The  soul  of  man  was  supposed  by  many  ancient  sages  to  be 
thrust  into  the  human  body  as  into  a  prison,  for  punishment  of 
past  offenses.  But  the  worst  prison  is  the  body  of  an  indolent 
epicure,  whose  blood  is  inflamed  by  fermented  liquors  and  high 
sauces,  or  rendered  putrid,  sharp,  and  corrosive  by  a  stagnation 
of  the  animal  juices  through  sloth  and  indolence;  whose  mem- 
branes are  irritated  by  pungent  salts;  whose  mind  is  agitated  by 
painful  oscillations  of  the  nervous  system,  and  whose  nerves  are 
mutually  affected  by  the  irregular  passions  of  his  mind.  This 
ferment  in  the  animal  economy  darkens  and  confounds  the  intel- 
lect. It  produceth  vain  terrors  and  vain  conceits,  and  stimulates 
the  soul  with  mad  desires,  which,  not  being  natural,  nothing  in 
nature  can  satisfy.  No  wonder,  therefore,  there  are  so  many 
fine  persons  of  both  sexes,  shining  themselves,  and  shone  on  by 
fortune,  who  are  inwardly  miserable  and  sick  of  life. 

The  hardness  of  stubbed  vulgar  constitutions  renders  them 
insensible  of  a  thousand  things  that  fret  and  gall  those  delicate 
people,  who,  as  if  their  skin  was  peeled  off,  feel  to  the  quick 
everything  that  touches  them.  The  remedy  for  this  exquisite 
and  painful  sensibility  is  commonly  sought  from  fermented,  per- 
haps from  distilled  liquors,  which  render  many  lives  wretched 
that  would  otherwise  have  been  only  ridiculous.  The  tender 
nerves  and  low  spirits  of  such  poor  creatures  would  be  much 
relieved  by  the  use  of  tar-water,  which  might  prolong  and  cheer 
their  lives.  I  do  therefore  recommend  to  them  the  use  of  a 
cordial,  not  only  safe  and  innocent,  but  giving  health  and  spirit 
as  sure  as  other  cordials  destroy  them. 

I  do  verily  think  there  is  not  any  other  medicine  whatsoever 
so  effectual  to  restore  a  crazy  constitution  and  cheer  a  dreary 
mind,  or  so  likely  to  subvert  that  gloomy  empire  of  the  spleen 
which  tyrannizeth  over  the  better  sort  (as  they  are  called)  of 
these  free  nations,  and  maketh  them,  in  spite  of  their  liberty 
and  property,  more  wretched  slaves  than  even  the  subjects  of  ab- 
solute power  who  breathe  clear  air  in  a  sunny  climate,  while 
men  of  low  degree  often  enjoy  a  tranquillity  and  content  that  no 
advantage  of  birth  or  fortune  can  equal.  Such  indeed  was  the 
case  while  the  rich  alone  could  afford  to  be  debauched;  but 
when  even  beggars  became  debauchees,  the  case  was  altered. 

The  public  virtue  and  spirit  of  the  British  legislature  never 
showed  itself  more  conspicuous  in  any  act,  than  in  that  for 
suppressing    the    immoderate   use    of   distilled    spirits   among   the 


l8o8  GEORGE   BERKELEY 

people,  whose  streng-th  and  numbers  constitute  the  true  wealth  of 
a  nation:  though  evasive  arts  will,  it  is  feared,  prevail  so  long 
as  distilled  spirits  of  any  kind  are  allowed,  the  character  of 
Englishmen  in  general  being  that  of  Brutus,  Qiiicqiiid  vult  valde 
vult  [whatever  he  desires  he  desires  intensely].  But  why  should 
such  a  canker  be  tolerated  in  the  vitals  of  a  State,  under  any 
pretense,  or  in  any  shape  whatsoever  ?  Better  by  far  the  whole 
present  set  of  distillers  were  pensioners  of  the  public,  and  their 
trade  abolished  by  law;  since  all  the  benefit  thereof  put  together 
would  not  balance  the  hundredth  part  of  its  mischief. 

This  tar-water  will  also  give  charitable  relief  to  the  ladies, 
who  often  want  it  more  than  the  parish  poor;  being  many  of 
them  never  able  to  make  a  good  meal,  and  sitting-  pale  and  puny, 
and  forbidden  like  ghosts,  at  their  own  table,  victims  of  vapors 
and  indigestion. 

Studious  persons  also,  pent  up  in  narrow  holes,  breathing  bad 
air,  and  stooping  over  their  books,  are  much  to  be  pitied.  As 
they  are  debarred  the  free  use  of  air  and  exercise,  this  I  will 
venture  to  recommend  as  the  best  succedaneum  to  both;  though 
it  were  to  be  wished  that  modern  scholars  would,  like  the  ancients, 
meditate  and  converse  more  in  walks  and  gardens  and  open  air, 
which  upon  the  whole  would  perhaps  be  no  hindrance  to  their 
learning,  and  a  great  advantage  to  their  health.  My  own  sed- 
entary course  of  life  had  long  since  thrown  me  into  an  ill  habit, 
attended  with  many  ailments,  particularly  a  nervous  colic,  which 
rendered  my  life  a  burden,  and  the  more  so  because  my  pains 
were  exasperated  by  exercise.  But  since  the  use  of  tar-water,  I 
find,  though  not  a  perfect  recovery  from  my  old  and  rooted  ill- 
ness, yet  such  a  gradual  return  of  health  and  ease,  that  I  esteem 
my  having  taken  this  medicine  the  greatest  of  all  temporal  bless- 
ings, and  am  convinced  that  under  Providence  I  owe  my  life 
*.o  it. 


i8o9 


HECTOR   BERLIOZ 

(1 803- 1 869) 

Jo  THE  concert-goer  the  name  Hector  Berlioz  calls  up  a 
series  of  vast  and  magnificent  whirlwinds  of  vocal  and 
orchestral  sonority,  the  thoughts  of  scores  that  sound  and 
look  imposingly  complex  to  the  eyes  and  ears  of  both  the  educated 
and  uneducated  in  the  composer's  art.  We  have  a  vision  of  close 
pages  embodying  the  most  unequivocal  and  drastic  of  musical  "  real- 
ism.'*  The  full  audacity  and  mastery  of  a  certain  sort  of  genius  are 
represented  in  his  vast  works.  They  bespeak,  too,  the  combative 
musician  and  reformer.  Berlioz  took  the 
kingdom  of  music  by  violence. 

His  chef  d'ceuvres  do  not  all  say  to  us  as 
much  as  he  meant  them  to  say,  not  as  much 
as  they  all  uttered  fifty  years  ago.  There 
is  much  clay  as  well  as  gold  in  them.  But 
such  tremendous  products  of  his  energy  and 
intellect  as  the  <  Requiem,^  the  ^  Te  Deum,* 
*The  Damnation  of  Faust,  ^  his  best  descript- 
ive symphonies  such  as  the  ^  Romeo  and 
Juliet,^  are  yet  eloquent  to  the  public  and 
to  the  critical-minded.  His  best  was  so  very 
good  that  his  worst  —  weighed  as  a  matter 
of  principle  or  execution,  regarded  as  music 
or  *^  programme  music  *^  —  can  be  excused. 

Berlioz's  actual  biography  is  a  long  tale  of  storm  and  stress.  Not 
only  was  he  slow  in  gaining  appreciation  while  he  lived;  full  com- 
prehension of  his  power  was  not  granted  him  till  after  his  energetic 
life  was  over.  Recognition  in  his  own  coimtry  is  incomplete  to  day. 
He  was  born  in  1803,  near  picturesque  Grenoble,  in  the  little  town  of 
Cote  St.  Andre,  the  son  of  an  excellent  country  doctor.  Sent  to 
Paris  to  study  medicine,  he  became  a  musician  against  his  father's 
wish,  and  in  lieu  of  the  allowance  that  his  father  promptly  withdrew, 
the  young  man  lived  by  engaging  in  the  chorus  of  the  Gymnase,  and 
by  catching  at  every  straw  for  subsistence.  He  became  a  regular 
music-student  of  the  Conservatory,  under  the  admirable  Lesueur  and 
Reicha;  quitted  the  Conservatory  in  disgust  at  its  pedantry,  in  1825; 
and  lived  and  advanced  in  musical  study  as  best  he  could  for  a  con- 
siderable time.  His  convictions  in  art  were  founded  largely  on  the 
III — 114 


Hector  Berlioz 


l8io  HECTOR   BERLIOZ 

rock  of  Gluck,  Mozart,  Beethoven,  and  Weber;  and  however  modern, 
and  however  widely  his  work  departs  from  such  academic  models, 
Berlioz  never  forswore  a  certain  allegiance  to  these  great  and  serene 
masters.  He  returned  to  the  Conservatory,  studied  hard,  gained  the 
Prix  de  Rome,  gradually  took  a  prominent  place  among  Parisian  com- 
posers, and  was  as  enthusiastically  the  subject  of  a  cult  as  was 
Wagner.  His  concerts  and  the  production  of  his  operas  encountered 
shameful  cabals.  His  strongest  works  were  neglected  or  ill-served. 
To  their  honor,  German  musicians  understood  him,  Schumann  and  Liszt 
in  especial.  Only  in  Germany  to-day  are  his  colossal  operas  heard. 
The  Italian  Paganini  showed  a  generous  interest  in  his  struggles. 
Russia  and  Austria  too  admired  him,  while  his  compatriots  hissed. 
His  career  was  one  of  endless  work,  disappointments,  brief  successes, 
battles,  hopes,  and  despairs.  Personally,  too,  it  was  full  of  the  hap- 
piness and  unhappiness  of  the  artistic  temperament. 

It  was  between  the  two  periods  of  his  Conservatory  life  that  he 
endured  his  chief  sentimental  misfortune, — his  falling  in  love  with 
and  finally  marrying  Henrietta  Smithson.  Miss  Smithson  was  a 
young  English  actress  playing  Shakespearean  roles  in  France  with 
a  passing  success.  She  was  exquisitely  lovely  —  Delaroche  has  painted 
her  spirituelle  beauty  in  his  *  Ophelia.*  The  marriage  was  the  typi- 
cally unfortunate  artist-match;  and  she  became  a  paralytic  invalid 
for  years.  After  her  death,  tours  in  Germany  and  elsewhere,  new 
works,  new  troubles,  enthusiasms,  and  disappointments  filled  up  the 
remainder  of  the  composer's  days.  He  returned  to  his  beloved 
Dauphine,  war-worn  and  almost  as  one  who  has  outlived  life.  In 
his  provincial  retreat  he  composed  the  huge  operatic  duology  <  The 
Trojans  at  Carthage,*  and  <  The  Taking  of  Troy,*  turning  once  more 
to  Virgil,  his  early  literary  love.  Neither  of  them  is  often  heard 
now,  any  more  than  his  amazing  <  Benvenuto  Cellini.*  Their  author 
died  in  Dauphine  in  1869,  weary,  disenchanted,  but  conscious  that  he 
would  be  greater  in  the  eyes  of  a  coming  generation  than  ever  he 
had  been  during  his  harassed  life. 

Berlioz's  literary  remains  are  valuable  as  criticisms,  and  their  per- 
sonal matter  is  of  brisk  and  varied  charm.  His  intense  feeling  for 
Shakespeare  influenced  his  whole  aesthetic  life.  He  was  extremely 
well  read.  His  most  unchecked  tendency  to  romanticism  was  bal- 
anced by  a  fine  feeling  for  the  classics.  He  loved  the  greater  Greek 
and  Latin  writers.  His  Autobiography  is  a  perfect  picture  of  him- 
self emotionally,  and  exhibits  his  wide  aesthetic  nature.  His  Letters 
are  equally  faithful  as  portraiture.  He  possessed  a  distinctively 
literary  style.  He  tells  us  how  he  fell  in  love  —  twice,  thrice;  re- 
cords the  disgraceful  cabals  and  intrigues  against  his  professional 
success,    and   explains  how   a  landscape   affected  his  nerves.      He   is 


HECTOR   BERLIOZ  1811 

excellent  reading,  apparently  without  taking  much  pains  to  be  so. 
Vivacity,  wit,  sincerity,  are  salient  traits.  In  his  volume  of  musical 
essays  entitled  <A  Travers  Chants  >  (an  untranslatable  title  which 
may  be  paraphrased  <  Memoirs  of  Music  and  Musicians  >)  are  super 
rior  appreciations  of  musicians  and  interpreters  and  performances  in 
opera-house  and  concert-hall,  expressed  with  grace  and  taste  in  the 
feuilletonist's  best  manner.  In  the  Journal  des  Debats,  year  by  year, 
he  wrote  himself  down  indisputably  among  the  great  French  critics; 
and  he  never  misused  his  critical  post  to  make  it  a  lever  for  his 
own  advantage.  His  great  treatise  on  Orchestration  is  a  standard 
work  not  displaced  by  Gevaert  or  more  recent  authorities.  He  was 
not  only  a  musical  intelligence  of  enormous  capacity:  he  offers  per- 
haps as  typical  an  embodiment  of  the  French  artistic  temperament 
as  can  be  pointed  out. 


THE   ITALIAN   RACE   AS  MUSICIANS  AND  AUDITORS 
From   Berlioz's  Autobiography 

IT  APPEARS,  however,  —  so  at  least  I  am  assured, — that  the 
Italians  do  occasionally  listen.  But  at  any  rate,  music  to  the 
Milanese,  no  less  than  to  the  Neapolitans,  Romans,  Floren- 
tines, and  Genoese,  means  nothing  but  an  air,  a  duet,  or  a  trio, 
well  sung.  For  anything  beyond  this  they  feel  simply  aversion 
or  indifference.  Perhaps  these  antipathies  are  mainly  due  to  the 
wretched  performance  of  their  choruses  and  orchestras,  which 
effectually  prevents  their  knowing  anything  good  outside  the 
beaten  track  they  have  so  long  followed.  Possibly,  too,  they 
may  to  a  certain  extent  understand  the  flights  of  men  of  genius, 
if  these  latter  are  careful  not  to  give  too  rude  a  shock  to  their 
rooted  predilections.  The  great  success  of  *  Guillaume  Tell  ^  at 
Florence  supports  this  opinion,  and  even  Spontini's  sublime 
*  Vestale  ^  obtained  a  series  of  brilliant  representations  at  Naples 
some  twenty-five  years  ago.  Moreover,  in  those  towns  which  are 
under  the  Austrian  rule,  you  will  see  the  people  rush  after  a 
military  band,  and  listen  with  avidity  to  the  beautiful  German 
melodies,  so  unlike  their  usual  insipid  cavatinas.  Nevertheless, 
in  general  it  is  impossible  to  disguise  the  fact  that  the  Italians 
as  a  nation  really  appreciate  only  the  material  effects  of  music, 
and  distinguish  nothing  but  its  exterior  forms. 

Indeed,  I  am  much  inclined  to  regard  them  as  more  inaccess- 
ible  to   the   poetical   side   of   art,  and   to   any   conceptions  at  all 


l8i2  HECTOR   BERLIOZ 

above  the  common,  than  any  other  European  nation.  To  the 
Italians  music  is  a  sensual  pleasure,  and  nothing  more.  For  this 
most  beautiful  form  of  expression  they  have  scarcely  more 
respect  than  for  the  culinary  art.  In  fact,  they  like  music  which 
they  can  take  in  at  first  hearing,  without  reflection  or  attention, 
just  as  they  would  do  with  a  plate  of  macaroni. 

Now,  we  French,  mean  and  contemptible  musicians  as  we 
are,  although  we  are  no  better  than  the  Italians  when  we  furi- 
ously applaud  a  trill  or  a  chromatic  scale  by  the  last  new  singer, 
and  miss  altogether  the  beauty  of  some  grand  recitative  or  ani- 
mated chorus,  yet  at  least  we  can  listen,  and  if  we  do  not  take 
in  a  composer's  ideas  it  is  not  our  fault.  Beyond  the  Alps,  on 
the  contrary,  people  behave  in  a  manner  so  humiliating  both  to 
art  and  to  artists,  whenever  any  representation  is  going  on,  that 
I  confess  I  would  as  soon  sell  pepper  and  spice  at  a  grocer's  in 
the  Rue  St.  Denis  as  write  an  opera  for  the  Italians  —  nay,  I 
would  sooner  do  it. 

Added  to  this,  they  are  slaves  to  routine  and  to  fanaticism  to 
a  degree  one  hardly  sees  nowadays,  even  at  the  Academy.  The 
slightest  unforeseen  innovation,  whether  in  melody,  harmony, 
rhythm,  or  instrumentation,  puts  them  into  a  perfect  fury;  so 
much  so,  that  the  dilettanti  of  Rome,  on  the  appearance  of  Ros- 
sini's *  Barbiere  di  Seviglia  ^  (which  is  Italian  enough  in  all  con- 
science), were  ready  to  kill  the  young  maestro  for  having  the 
insolence  to  do  anything  unlike  Paisiello. 

But  what  renders  all  hope  of  improvement  quite  chimerical, 
and  tempts  one  to  believe  that  the  musical  feeling  of  the  Italians 
is  a  mere  necessary  result  of  their  organization, — the  opinion 
both  of  Gall  and  Spurzheim, —  is  their  love  for  all  that  is  dan- 
cing, brilliant,  glittering,  and  gay,  to  the  utter  neglect  of  the 
various  passions  by  which  the  characters  are  animated,  and  the 
confusion  of  time  and  place  —  in  a  word,  of  good  sense  itself. 
Their  music  is  always  laughing:  and  if  by  chance  the  composer 
in  the  course  of  the  drama  permits  himself  for  one  moment  not 
to  be  absurd,  he  at  once  hastens  back  to  his  prescribed  style,  his 
melodious  roulades  and  grupetti,  his  trills  and  contemptible  fri- 
volities, either  for  voice  or  orchestra;  and  these,  succeeding  so 
abruptly  to  something  true  to  life,  have  an  unreal  effect,  and  give 
the  opera  seria  all  the  appearance  of  a  parody  or  caricature. 

I  could  quote  plenty  of  examples  from  famous  works;  but 
speaking  generally  of  these  artistic  questions,  is  it  not  from  Italy 


HECTOR   BERLIOZ 


1813 


that  we  get  those  stereotyped  conventional  forms  adopted  by  so 
many  French  composers,  resisted  by  Cherubini  and  Spontini  alone 
among  the  Italians,  though  rejected  entirely  by  the  Germans  ? 
What  well-organized  person  with  any  sense  of  musical  expression 
could  listen  to  a  quartet  in  which  four  characters,  animated  by 
totally  conflicting  passions,  should  successively  employ  the  same 
melodious  phrase  to  express  such  different  words  as  these:  "O,  toi 
que  j  'adore !  *^  **  Quelle  terreur  me  glace !  '^  ^^  Mon  coeur  bat  de 
plaisir !  '*  "  La  f ureur  me  transporte !  **  To  suppose  that  music 
is  a  language  so  vague  that  the  natural  inflections  of  fury  will 
serve  equally  well  for  fear,  joy,  and  love,  only  proves  the  absence 
of  that  sense  which  to  others  makes  the  varieties  of  expression  in 
music  as  incontestable  a  reality  as  the  existence  of  the  sun.  .  .  . 
I  regard  the  course  taken  by  Italian  composers  as  the  inevitable 
result  of  the  instincts  of  the  public,  which  react  more  or  less  on 
the  composers  themselves. 


THE    FAMOUS   « SNUFF-BOX   TREACHERY* 
From  the  Autobiography 

Now  tor  another  intrigue,  still  more  cleverly  contrived,  the 
black  depths  of  which  I  hardly  dare  fathom.  I  incriminate 
no  one;  I  simply  give  the  naked  facts,  without  the  smallest 
commentary,  but  with  scrupulous  exactness.  General  Bernard 
having  himself  informed  me  that  my  Requiem  was  to  be  per- 
formed on  certain  conditions,  ...  I  was  about  to  begin  my 
rehearsals  when  I  was  sent  for  by  the  Director  of  the  Beaux- Arts. 

^^  You  know,'*  said  he,  ^^  that  Habeneck  has  been  commissioned 
to  conduct  all  the  great  official  musical  festivals '?  **  ("  Come, 
good !  '*  thought  I :  "  here  is  another  tile  for  my  devoted  head.  **) 
"It  is  true  that  you  are  now  in  the  habit  of  conducting  the  per- 
formance of  your  works  yourself;  but  Habeneck  is  an  old  man'* 
(another  tile),  "and  I  happen  to  know  that  he  will  be  deeply 
hurt  if  he  does  not  preside  at  your  Requiem.  What  tenns  are 
you  on  with  him  ?  *' 

"  What  terms  ?  We  have  quarreled.  I  hardly  know  why.  For 
three  years  he  has  not  spoken  to  me.  I  am  not  aware  of  his 
motives,  and  indeed  have  not  cared  to  ask.  He  began  by  rudely 
refusing  to  conduct  one  of  my  concerts.  His  behavior  towards 
me  has  been  as  inexplicable  as  it  is  uncivil.     However,  as  I  see 


i8i4 


HECTOR   BERLIOZ 


plainly  that  he  wishes  on  the  present  occasion  to  figure  at  Mar- 
shal Damremont's  ceremony,  and  as  it  would  evidently  be  agree- 
able to  you,  I  consent  to  give  up  the  baton  to  him,  on  condition 
that  I  have  at  least  one  full  rehearsal.*' 

"Agreed,**  replied  the  Director;  "I  will  let  him  know  about 
it.» 

The  rehearsals  were  accordingly  conducted  with  great  care. 
Habeneck  spoke  to  me  as  if  our  relations  with  each  other  had 
never  been  interrupted,  and  all  seemed  likely  to  go  well. 

The  day  of  the  performance  arrived,  in  the  Church  of  the 
Invalides,  before  all  the  princes,  peers,  and  deputies,  the  French 
press,  the  correspondents  of  foreign  papers,  and  an  immense 
crowd.  It  was  absolutely  essential  for  me  to  have  a  great  suc- 
cess; a  moderate  one  would  have  been  fatal,  and  a  failure  would 
have  annihilated  me  altogether. 

Now  listen  attentively. 

The  various  groups  of  instruments  in  the  orchestra  were 
tolerably  widely  separated,  especially  the  four  brass  bands  intro- 
duced in  the  ^  Tuba  mirum,*  each  of  which  occupied  a  corner  of 
the  entire  orchestra.  There  is  no  pause  between  the  *■  Dies  Irae ' 
and  the  <  Tuba  mirum,*  but  the  pace  of  the  latter  movement  is 
reduced  to  half  what  it  was  before.  At  this  point  the  whole  of 
the  brass  enters,  first  all  together,  and  then  in  passages,  answer- 
ing and  interrupting,  each  a  third  higher  than  the  last.  It  is 
obvious  that  it  is  of  the  greatest  importance  that  the  four  beats 
of  the  new  tonpo  should  be  distinctly  marked,  or  else  the  ter- 
rible explosion,  which  I  had  so  carefully  prepared  with  combina- 
tions and  proportions  never  attempted  before  or  since,  and  which, 
rightly  performed,  gives  such  a  picture  of  the  Last  Judgment  as 
I  believe  is  destined  to  live,  would  be  a  mere  enormous  and 
hideous  confusion. 

With  my  habitual  mistrust,  I  had  stationed  myself  behind 
Habeneck,  and  turning  my  back  on  him,  overlooked  the  group 
of  kettle-drums,  which  he  could  not  see,  when  the  moment 
approached  for  them  to  take  part  in  the  general  melee.  There 
are  perhaps  one  thousand  bars  in  my  Requiem.  Precisely  in 
that  of  which  I  have  just  been  speaking,  when  the  movement  is 
retarded,  and  the  wind  instruments  burst  in  with  their  terrible 
flourish  of  trumpets;  in  fact,  just  in  the  one  bar  where  the  con- 
ductor's motion  is  absolutely  indispensable,  Habeneck  puts  down 
his  baton,  quietly  takes  out  his  sjiuff  box,  and  proceeds  to  take  a 


HECTOR   BERLIOZ 


1815 


pinch  of  snuff.  I  always  had  my  eye  in  his  direction,  and 
instantly  turned  rapidly  on  one  heel,  and  springing  forward 
before  him,  I  stretched  out  my  arm  and  marked  the  four  great 
beats  of  the  new  movement.  The  orchestras  followed  me,  each 
in  order.  I  conducted  the  piece  to  the  end,  and  the  effect  which 
I  had  longed  for  was  produced.  When,  at  the  last  words  of  the 
chorus,  Habeneck  saw  that  the  ^  Tuba  minim  *  was  saved,  he 
said,  *^  What  a  cold  perspiration  I  have  been  in !  Without  you 
we  should  have  been  lost.**  "Yes,  I  know,**  I  answered,  looking 
fixedly  at  him.  I  did  not  add  another  word.  .  .  .  Had  he 
done  it  on  purpose  ?  ,  .  .  Could  it  be  possible  that  this  man 
had  dared  to  join  my  enemy,  the  Director,  and  Cherubini's 
friends,  in  plotting  and  attempting  such  rascality  ?  I  don't  wish 
to  believe  it  .  .  .  but  I  cannot  doubt  it.  God  forgive  me  if 
I  am  doing  the  man  injustice!  , 

ON  GLUCK 
From   the    Autobiography 

OF  ALL  the  ancient  composers,  Gluck  has,  I  believe,  the  least 
to  fear  from  the  incessant  revolutions  of  art.  He  sacri- 
ficed nothing  either  to  the  caprices  of  singers,  the  exigen- 
cies of  fashion,  or  the  inveterate  routine  with  which  he  had  to 
contend  on  his  arrival  in  France,  after  his  protracted  struggles 
with  the  Italian  theatres.  Doubtless  his  conflicts  at  Milan, 
Naples,  and  Parma,  instead  of  weakening  him,  had  increased  his 
strength  by  revealing  its  full  extent  to  himself;  for  in  spite  of 
the  fanaticism  then  prevalent  in  our  artistic  customs,  he  broke 
these  miserable  trammels  and  trod  them  underfoot  with  the 
greatest  ease.  True,  the  clamor  of  the  critics  once  succeeded  in 
forcing  him  into  a  reply;  but  it  was  the  only  indiscretion  with 
which  he  had  to  reproach  himself,  and  thenceforth,  as  before, 
he  went  straight  to  his  aim  in  silence.  We  all  know  what  that 
aim  was;  we  also  know  that  it  was  never  given  to  any  man  to 
succeed  more  fully.  With  less  conviction  or  less  firmness,  it  is 
probable  that,  notwithstanding  his  natural  genius,  his  degenerate 
works  would  not  have  long  survived  those  of  his  mediocre  rivals 
now  completely  forgotten.  But  truth  of  expression,  purity  of 
style,  and  grandeur  of  form  belong  to  all  time.  Gluck's  fine 
passages  will  always  be  fine.  Victor  Hugo  is  right:  the  heart 
never  grows  old 


jgl6  HECTOR   BERLIOZ 

ON    BACH 

From  the  Autobiography 

You  will  not,  my  dear  Demarest,  expect  an  analysis  from  me 
of  Bach's  great  work:  such  a  task  would  quite  exceed  my 
prescribed  limits.  Indeed,  the  movement  performed  at  the 
Conservatoire  three  years  ago  may  be  considered  the  type  of  the 
author's  style  throughout  the  work.  The  Germans  profess  an 
unlimited  admiration  for  Bach's  recitatives;  but  their  peculiar 
characteristic  necessarily  escaped  me,  as  I  did  not  understand 
the  language  and  was  unable  to  appreciate  their  expression. 
Whoever  is  familiar  with  our  musical  customs  in  Paris  must  wit- 
ness, in  order  to  believe,  the  attention,  respect,  and  even  rever- 
ence with  which  a  German  public  listens  to  such  a  composition. 
Every  one  follows  the  words  on  the  book  with  his  eyes;  not  a 
movement  among  the  audience,  not  a  murmur  of  praise  or  blame, 
not  a  sound  of  applause ;  they  are  listening  to  a  solemn  dis- 
course, they  are  hearing  the  gospel  sung,  they  are  attending 
divine  service  rather  than  a  concert.  And  really  such  music 
ought  to  be  thus  listened  to.  They  adore  Bach,  and  believe  in 
him,  without  supposing  for  a  moment  that  his  divinity  could  ever 
be  called  into  question.  A  heretic  would  horrify  them,  he  is 
forbidden  even  to  speak  of  him.  God  is  God  and  Bach  is  Bach. 
Some  days  after  the  performance  of  Bach's  clicf  d'ceuvre,  the 
Singing  Academy  announced  Graun's  ^  Tod  Jesu.^  This  is  another 
sacred  work,  a  holy  book;  the  worshipers  of  which  are,  however, 
mainly  to  be  found  in  Berlin,  whereas  the  religion  of  Bach  is 
professed  throughout  the  north  of  Germany. 

MUSIC  AS  AN  ARISTOCRATIC  ART 
From  the  Autobiography 

DRAMATIC  art  in  the  time  of  Shakespeare  was  more  appreciated 
by  the  masses  than  it  is  in  our  day  by  those  nations  which 
lay  most  claim  to  possess  a  feeling  for  it.     Music  is  essen- 
tially aristocratic;    it  is  a  daughter  of  noble  race,  such  as  princes 
only  can  dower  nowadays;  it  must  be  able  to  live  poor  and  un- 
mated  rather  than  form  a  indsalliance. 


HECTOR   BERLIOZ  1817 

THE  BEGINNING  OF  A  « GRAND  PASSION » 

From  the  Autobiography 

I  HAVE  now  come  to  the  grand  drama  of  my  life;  but  I  shall 
not  relate  all  its  painful  details.  It  is  enough  to  say  that 
an  English  company  came  over  to  perform  Shakespeare's 
plays,  then  entirely  unknown  in  France,  at  the  Odeon.  I  was 
present  at  the  first  performance  of  *  Hamlet, '  and  there,  in  the 
part  of  Ophelia,  I  saw  Miss  Smithson,  whom  I  married  five  years 
afterward.  I  can  only  compare  the  effect  produced  by  her  won- 
derful talent,  or  rather  her  dramatic  genius,  on  my  imagination 
and  heart,  with  the  convulsion  produced  on  my  mind  by  the 
work  of  the  great  poet  whom  she  interpreted.  It  is  impossible 
to  say  more. 

This  sudden  and  unexpected  revelation  of  Shakespeare  over- 
whelmed me.  The  lightning-flash  of  his  genius  revealed  the 
whole  heaven  of  art  to  me,  illuminating  its  remotest  depths  in  a 
single  flash.  I  recognized  the  meaning  of  real  grandeur,  real 
beauty,  and  real  dramatic  truth;  and  I  also  realized  the  utter 
absurdity  of  the  ideas  circulated  by  Voltaire  in  France  about 
Shakespeare,  and  the  pitiful  pettiness  of  our  old  poetic  school, 
the  offspring  of  pedagogues  and  freres  ignorantins. 

But  the  shock  was  too  great,  and  it  was  a  long  while  before 
I  recovered  from  it.  I  became  possessed  by  an  intense,  over- 
powering sense  of  sadness,  that  in  my  then  sickly,  nervous  state 
produced  a  mental  condition  adequately  to  describe  which  would 
take  a  great  physiologist.  I  could  not  sleep,  I  lost  my  spirits, 
my  favorite  studies  became  distasteful  to  me,  and  I  spent  my 
time  wandering  aimlessly  about  Paris  and  its  environs.  During 
that  long  period  of  suffering,  I  can  only  recall  four  occasions  on 
which  I  slept,  and  then  it  was  the  heavy,  death-like  sleep  pro- 
duced by  complete  physical  exhaustion.  These  were  one  night 
when  I  had  thrown  myself  down  on  some  sheaves  in  a  field  near 
Ville-Juif;  one  day  in  a  meadow  in  the  neighborhood  of  Sceaux; 
once  on  the  snow  on  the  banks  of  the  frozen  Seine,  near  Neuilly; 
and  lastly,  on  a  table  in  the  Cafe  du  Cardinal  at  the  corner  of 
the  Boulevard  des  Italiens  and  the  Rue  Richelieu,  where  I  slept 
for  five  hours,  to  the  terror  of  the  gargofts,  who  thought  I  was 
dead  and  were  afraid  to  come  near  me. 


jgjg  HECTOR   BERLIOZ 

It  was  on  my  return  from  one  of  these  wanderings,  in  which 
I  must  have  seemed  like  one  seeking  his  soul,  that  my  eyes  fell 
on  Moore's  ^  Irish  Melodies,'  lying  open  on  my  table  at  the  song 
beginning  "When  he  who  adores  thee.*'  I  seized  my  pen,  and 
then  and  there  wrote  the  music  to  that  heart-rending  farewell, 
which  is  published  at  the  end  of  my  collection  of  songs,  <  Irlande, ' 
under  the  title  of  ^Elegie.'  This  is  the  only  occasion  on  which  I 
have  been  able  to  vent  any  strong  feeling  in  music  while  still 
under  its  influence.  And  I  think  that  I  have  rarely  reached 
such  intense  truth  of  musical  expression,  combined  with  so  much 
realistic  power  of  harmony. 


ON   THEATRICAL   MANAGERS    IN    RELATION   TO   ART 
From  the  <  Autobiogftaphy  > 

I  HAVE  often  wondered  why  theatrical  managers  everywhere 
have  such  a  marked  predilection  for  what  genuine  artists, 
cultivated  minds,  and  even  a  certain  section  of  the  public 
itself  persist  in  regarding  as  very  poor  manufacture,  short-lived 
productions,  the  handiwork  of  which  is  as  valueless  as  the  raw 
material  itself.  Not  as  though  platitudes  always  succeeded  better 
than  good  works;  indeed,  the  contrary  is  often  the  case.  Neither 
is  it  that  careful  compositions  entail  more  expense  than  ^*  shoddy. " 
It  is  often  just  the  other  way.  Perhaps  it  arises  simply  from  the 
fact  that  the  good  works  demand  the  care,  study,  attention,  and, 
in  certain  cases,  even  the  mind,  talent,  and  inspiration  of  every 
one  in  the  theatre,  from  the  manager  down  to  the  prompter. 
The  others,  on  the  contrary,  being  made  especially  for  lazy, 
mediocre,  superficial,  ignorant,  and  silly  people,  naturally  find  a 
great  many  supporters.  Well !  a  manager  likes,  above  every- 
thing, whatever  brings  him  in  amiable  speeches  and  satisfied 
looks  from  his  underlings,  he  likes  things  that  require  no  learn- 
ing and  disturb  no  accepted  ideas  or  habits,  which  gently  go 
with  the  stream  of  prejudice,  and  wound  no  self-love,  because 
they  reveal  no  incapacity:  in  a  word,  things  which  do  not  take 
too  long  to  get  up. 


i8i9 


SAINT   BERNARD   OF  CLAIRVAUX 

(1091-1153) 

jORN  in  1 09 1,  at  Fontaines,  a  castle  of  his  father  Tescelin,  near 
Dijon,  France,  and  devotedly  instructed  by  his  pious  and 
gentle  mother  Aleth,  Bernard  of  Clairvaux  was  from  early 
childhood  imbued  with  an  active  religious  enthusiasm.  When  the 
time  came  to  choose  his  way  of  life,  instead  of  going  into  battle 
with  his  knighted  brothers,  he  made  them,  as  well  as  his  uncle  the 
count  of  Touillon,  join  a  band  of  thirty  companions,  with  whom  he 
knelt  in  the  rude  chapel  at  Citeaux  to  beg  the  tonsure  from  Abbot 
Stephen  Harding.  To  rise  at  two  o'clock 
in  the  morning  and  chant  the  prayer-offices 
of  the  church  until  nine,  to  do  hard  manual 
labor  until  two,  when  the  sole  meal  of  the 
day  —  composed  of  vegetable  food  only  — 
was  taken,  to  labor  again  until  nightfall 
and  sing  the  vespers  until  an  early  bed- 
time hour:  siich  was  the  Cistercian's  daily 
observance  of  his  vows  of  poverty,  chastity, 
and  obedience, — vows  which  Bernard  and 
his  followers  were  to  lay  down  only  upon 
the  cross  of  ashes  spread  upon  the  hard 
cell  floor  to  receive  their  outstretched, 
dying  bodies. 

Citeaux  became  famous  from  the  coming  of  these  new  recruits. 
There  was,  in  those  tough  old  days,  a  soldierly  admiration  for  faith- 
fulness to  discipline;  and  when  Bernard  was  professed  in  11 14,  Abbot 
Stephen  was  obliged  to  enlarge  the  field  of  work.  Bernard  was  sent 
in  1 1 1 5  to  build  a  house  and  clear  and  cultivate  a  farm  in  a  thickly 
wooded  and  thief-infested  glen  to  the  north  of  Dijon,  known  as  the 
Valley  of  Wormwood.  Here  at  the  age  of  twenty-four,  in  a  rude 
house  built  by  their  own  hands  with  timber  cut  from  the  land,  the 
young  abbot  and  his  companions  lived  like  the  sturdy  pioneers  of 
our  Northwest,  the  earth  their  floor  and  narrow  wooden  bunks  in  a 
low  dark  loft  their  beds.  Of  course  the  stubborn  forest  gave  way 
slowly,  and  grudgingly  opened  sunny  hillsides  to  the  vine  and  wheat- 
sheaf.  The  name  of  the  settlement  was  changed  to  Clairvaux,  but 
for  many  years  the  poor  monks'  only  food  was  barley  bread,  with 
broth  made  from  boiled  beech  leaves.     Here  Tescelin  came  in  his  old 


Saint    Bernard 


,820  SAINT  BERNARD  OF   CLAIRVAUX 

age  to  live  under  the  rule  of  his  sons;  and  Humbeline,  the  wealthy 
and  rank-proud  daughter,  one  day  left  her  gay  retinue  at  the  door  of 
their  little  abbey  and  went  to  join  the  nuns  at  Jouilly. 

While  Bernard  was  studying  and  planting  at  Clairvaux,  the  word 
of  his  piety  and  worth  went  everywhere  through  the  land,  and  he 
came  to  be  consulted  not  only  by  his  Superior  at  Citeaux,  but  by 
villein  and  noble,  even  to  the  august  persons  of  Louis  the  Fat  of 
France  and  Henry  the  Norman  of  England.  His  gentleness  and 
integrity  became  the  chief  reliance  of  the  royal  house  of  France, 
and  his  sermons  and  letters  began  to  be  quoted  at  council  board  and 
synod  even  as  far  as  Rome.  The  austerity  and  poverty  of  the  Cis- 
tercians had  caused  some  friends  of  the  monks  of  Cluny  to  fall  under 
Bernard's  zealous  indignation.  He  wrote  to  William  of  St.  Thierry 
a  famous  letter,  mildly  termed  an  Apology;  in  which,  by  the  most 
insinuating  and  biting  satire,  the  laxity  and  indulgence  which  had 
weakened  or  effaced  the  power  of  monastic  example  (from  which 
arraignment  the  proud  house  of  Cluny  was  deemed  not  to  escape 
scot-free)  were  lashed  with  uncompromising  courage. 

France  and  Burgundy,  with  the  more  or  less  helpful  aid  of  the 
Norman  dukes  in  England,  had  been  very  loyal  to  the  interests  of 
the  Papacy.  When  the  schism  of  Anacletus  II.  arose  in  1130,  Inno- 
cent II.,  driven  from  Rome  by  the  armed  followers  of  Peter  de 
Leon,  found  his  way  at  once  to  the  side  of  Louis  VI.  There  he 
found  Bernard,  and  upon  him  he  leaned  from  that  time  until  the 
latter  had  hewed  a  road  for  him  back  to  Rome  through  kings,  prel- 
ates, statesmen,  and  intriguers,  with  the  same  unflinching  steadfast- 
ness with  which  he  had  cut  a  way  to  the  sunlight  for  his  vines  and 
vegetables  in  the  Valley  of  Wormwood.  Bernard  it  was  who  per- 
suaded Henry  of  England  to  side  with  Innocent,  and  it  was  he  who 
stayed  the  revival  of  the  question  of  investitures  and  won  the  Em- 
peror to  the  Pope  at  Liege.  At  the  Council  of  Rheims  in  October 
1 131,  Bernard  was  the  central  figure;  and  when  the  path  was  open 
for  a  return  to  Italy,  the  restored  Pope  took  the  abbot  with  him, 
leaving  in  return  a  rescript  releasing  Citeaux  from  tithes.  Bernard 
stayed  in  Italy  until   1135,  and  left  Innocent  secure  in  Rome. 

After  a  short  period  of  peace  at  Clairvaux,  he  had  to  hurry  oflf 
again  to  Italy  on  account  of  the  defection  of  the  influential  mon- 
astery of  Monte  Casino  to  Anacletus. 

Not  long  after  his  last  return  from  Italy,  Bernard  met  Pierre 
Abelard.  This  brilliant  and  unfortunate  man  had  incurred  the 
charge  of  heresy,  and  at  some  time  in  the  year  1139  Bernard  was 
induced  to  meet  and  confer  with  him.  Nothing  seems  to  have  re- 
sulted from  the  conference,  for  Abelard  went  in  1140  to  the  Bishop 
of    Sens   and    demanded    an    opportunity    of    being    confronted    with 


SAINT   BERNARD   OF   CLAIRVAUX  1 821 

Bernard  at  an  approaching  synod.  The  abbot  of  Clairvanx,  although 
unwilling,  was  at  last  persuaded  to  accept  the  challenge.  Loi:is 
VII.,  King  of  France,  Count  Theobald  of  Champagne,  and  the  nobles 
of  the  realm  assembled  to  witness  the  notable  contest.  Abelard 
came  with  a  brilliant  following;  but  on  the  second  day  of  the  synod, 
to  the  surprise  of  everybody,  he  abruptly  closed  the  proceeding  by 
appealing  to  Rome.  The  works  of  Abelard  were  condemned,  but  his 
appeal  and  person  were  respected,  and  Bernard  prepared  a  strong 
condemnatory  letter  to  be  sent  to  the  Pope.  As  the  great  scholar 
was  on  his  way  to  Rome  to  follow  his  appeal,  he  stayed  to  rest  at 
Cluny  with  Peter  the  Venerable,  who  persuaded  him  to  go  to  Ber- 
nard. When  the  two  great  hearts  met  in  the  quiet  of  Clairvaux,  all 
animosities  were  resolved  in  peace ;  and  Abelard,  returning  to  Cluny, 
abandoned  his  appeal  and  observed  the  rule  of  the  house  until  his 
death,  which  he  endured,  as  Peter  the  Venerable  wrote  to  Heloise, 
fully  prepared  and  comforted,  at  Chalons  in  1 142. 

The  infidels  of  the  East  having  taken  Edessa  in  1 146,  the  power 
of  the  Christians  in  the  Holy  Land  was  broken;  and  Eugenius  III., 
who  had  been  a  monk  of  Clairvaux,  appointed  Bernard  to  preach  a 
new  crusade.  He  set  on  foot  a  vast  host  under  the  personal  leader- 
ship of  Louis  VII.  and  Conrad  the  Emperor,  accompanied  by  Queen 
Eleanor  and  many  noble  ladies  of  both  realms.  The  ill  fortunes 
which  attended  this  war  brought  to  Bernard  the  greatest  bitterness 
of  his  life.  So  signal  was  the  failure  of  the  Second  Crusade,  that 
but  a  pitiful  remnant  of  the  brilliant  army  which  had  crossed  the 
Bosphorus  returned  to  Europe,  and  Bernard  was  assailed  with  exe- 
cration from  hut  and  castle  throughout  the  length  of  Europe.  His 
only  answer  was  as  gentle  as  his  life :  "  Better  that  I  be  blamed  than 
God.*^  He  did  not  neglect,  however,  to  point  out  that  the  evil  lives 
and  excesses  of  those  who  attempted  the  Crusade  were  the  real 
causes  of  the   failure   of  the  Christian  arms. 

In  Languedoc  in  1147  he  quelled  a  dangerous  heresy,  and  silenced 
Gilbert,  bishop  of  Poitiers,  at  the  Council  of  Rheims. 

In  1 148  Malachy,  Archbishop  of  Armagh  and  Primate  of  Ireland, 
who  nine  years  before  had  visited  Clairvaux  and  formed  a  lasting 
friendship  for  Bernard,  came  there  again  to  die  in  the  arms  of  his 
friend.  It  is  related  that  the  two  saints  had  exchanged  habits  upon 
the  first  visit,  and  that  Malachy  wore  that  of  Bernard  on  his  death- 
bed. The  funeral  sermon  preached  by  Bernard  upon  the  life  and 
virtue  of  his  Irish  comrade  is  reputed  to  be  one  of  the  finest  extant. 
It  seemed  as  if  the  Gael  had  come  to  show  the  Goth  the  way  of 
death.  Bernard's  health,  early  broken  by  self-imposed  austerity  and 
penances,  had  never  been  robust,  and  it  had  often  seemed  that 
nothing  but  the  vigor  of  his  will  had  kept  him  from  the  grave.     In 


l822  SAINT  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX 

the  year  1153  he  was  stricken  with  a  fatal  illness.  Yet  when  the 
archbishop  of  Treves  came  to  his  bedside,  imploring  his  aid  to  put 
an  end  to  an  armed  quarrel  between  the  nobles  and  the  people  of 
Metz,  he  went  cheerfully  but  feebly  to  the  field  between  the  con- 
tending parties,  and  by  words  which  came  with  pain  and  in  the 
merest  whispers,  he  persuaded  the  men  who  were  already  at  each 
other's  throats  to  forget  their  enmities. 

He  died  at  Clairvaux  on  January  12th,  1153,  and  was  buried,  as  he 
wished,  in  the  habit  of  Saint  Makichy.  In  11 74  he  was  sainted,  and 
his  life  is  honored  in  the  liturgy  of  the  church  on  the  20th  of  August. 

The  marks  of  Saint  Bernard's  character  were  sweetness  and  gentle 
tolerance  in  the  presence  of  honest  opposition,  and  implacable  vigor 
against  shams  and  evil-doing.  His  was  the  perfect  type  of  well-regu- 
lated individual  judgment.  His  humility  and  love  of  poverty  were 
true  and  unalterable.  In  Italy  he  refused  the  mitres  of  Genoa  and 
Milan  in  turn,  and  in  France  successively  declined  the  sees  of  Chalons. 
Langres,  and  Rheims.  He  wrote  and  spoke  with  simplicity  and 
directness,  and  with  an  energy  and  force  of  conviction  which  came 
from  absolute  command  of  his  subject.  He  did  not  disdain  to  use  a 
good-tempered  jest  as  occasion  required,  and  his  words  afford  some 
pleasant  examples  of  naive  puns.  He  was  a  tireless  letter-writer,  and 
some  of  his  best  writings  are  in  that  form.  He  devoted  much  labor 
to  his  sermons  on  the  Canticle  of  Canticles,  the  work  remaining  un- 
finished at  his  death.  He  wrote  a  long  poem  on  the  Passion,  one 
beautiful  hymn  of  which  is  included  in  the  Roman  Breviary. 


SAINT  BERNARD'S    HYMN 

JESu!  the  very  thought  of  thee 
With  sweetness  fills  my  breast, 
But  sweeter  far  thy  face  to  see 
And  in  thy  presence  rest. 

Nor  voice  can  sing  nor  heart  can  frame, 

Nor  can  the  memory  find, 
A  sweeter  sound  than  thy  blest  name, 

O  Savior  of  mankind! 

O  hope  of  every  contrite  heart! 

O  joy  of  all  the  meek! 
To  those  who  fall,  how  kind  thou  art, 

How  good  to  those  who  seek! 

But  what  to  those  who  find  ?     Ah,  this 
Nor  tongue  nor  pen  can  show. 


SAINT  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX  1823 

The  love  of  Jesus,  what  it  is 

None  but  his  loved  ones  know. 

Jesu!  our  only  joy  be  thou, 

As  thou  our  prize  wilt  be! 
Jesu!_  be  thou  our  glory  now 

And  through  eternity! 


MONASTIC   LUXURY 

From  the  Apology  to  the  Abbot  William  of  St.  Thierry 

THERE  is  no  conversation  concerning  the  Scriptures,  none  con- 
cerning the  salvation  of  souls;  but  small-talk,  laughter,  and 
idle  words  fill  the  air.  At  dinner  the  palate  and  ears  are 
equally  tickled  —  the  one  with  dainties,  the  other  with  gossip  and 
news,  which  together  quite  prevent  all  moderation  in  feeding.  In 
the  mean  time  dish  after  dish  is  set  on  the  table;  and  to  make 
up  for  the  small  privation  of  meat,  a  double  supply  is  provided 
of  well-grown  fish.  When  you  have  eaten  enough  of  the  first,  if 
you  taste  the  second  course,  you  will  seem  to  yourself  hardly  to 
have  touched  the  former:  such  is  the  art  of  the  cooks,  that  after 
four  or  five  dishes  have  been  devoured,  the  first  does  not  seem 
to  be  in  the  way  of  the  last,  nor  does  satiety  invade  the  appe- 
tite. .  .  .  Who  could  say,  to  speak  of  nothing  else,  in  how 
many  forms  eggs  are  cooked  and  worked  up  ?  with  what  care  they 
are  turned  in  and  out,  made  hard  or  soft,  or  chopped  fine;  now 
fried,  now  roasted,  now  stuffed;  now  they  are  served  mixed  with 
other  things,  now  by  themselves.  Even  the  external  appearance 
of  the  dishes  is  such  that  the  eye,  as  well  as  the  taste,  is 
charmed. 

Not  only  have  we  lost  the  spirit  of  the  old  monasteries,  but 
even  its  outward  appearance.  For  this  habit  of  ours,  which  of 
old  was  the  sign  of  humility,  by  the  monks  of  our  day  is  turned 
into  a  source  of  pride.  We  can  hardly  find  in  a  whole  province 
wherewithal  we  condescend  to  be  clothed.  The  monk  and  the 
knight  cut  their  garments,  the  one  his  cowl,  the  other  his  cloak, 
from  the  same  piece.  No  secular  person,  however  great,  whether 
king  or  emperor,  w^ould  be  disgusted  at  our  vestments  if  they 
were  only  cut  and  fitted  to  his  requirements.  But,  say  you, 
religion  is  in  the  heart,  not  in  the  garments  ?  True ;  but  you, 
when  you  are  about  to  buy  a  cowl,  rush  over  the  towns,  visit  the 


i824 


SAINT   BERNARD   OF  CLAIRVAUX 


markets,  examine  the  fairs,  dive  into  the  houses  of  the  merchants, 
turn  over  all  their  goods,  undo  their  bundles  of  cloth,  feel  it  with 
your  fingers,  hold  it  to  your  eyes  or  to  the  rays  of  the  sun,  and 
if  anything  coarse  or  faded  appears,  you  reject  it.  But  if  you  are 
pleased  with  any  object  of  unusual  beauty  or  brightness,  you  at 
once  buy  it,  whatever  the  price.  I  ask  you,  Does  this  come  from 
the  heart,   or  your  simplicity  ? 

I  wonder  that  our  abbots  allow  these  things,  unless  it  arises 
from  the  fact  that  no  one  is  apt  to  blame  any  error  with  confi- 
dence if  he  cannot  trust  in  his  own  freedom  from  the  same;  and 
it  is  a  right  human  quality  to  forgive  without  much  anger  those 
self-indulgences  in  others  for  which  we  ourselves  have  the  strong- 
est inclination.  How  is  the  light  of  the  world  overshadowed! 
Those  whose  lives  should  have  been  the  way  of  life  to  us,  by 
the  example  they  give  of  pride,  become  blind  leaders  of  the 
blind.  What  a  specimen  of  humility  is  that,  tc  march  with  such 
pomp  and  retinue,  to  be  surrounded  with  such  an  escort  of  hairy 
men,  so  that  one  abbot  has  about  him  people  enough  for  two 
bishops.  I  lie  not  when  I  say,  I  have  seen  an  abbot  with  sixty 
horses  after  him,  and  even  more.  Would  you  not  think,  as  you 
see  them  pass,  that  they  were  not  fathers  of  monasteries,  but 
lords  of  castles  —  not  shepherds  of  souls,  but  princes  of  prov- 
inces ?  Then  there  is  the  baggage,  containing  table-cloths,  and 
cups  and  basins,  and  candlesticks,  and  well-filled  wallets — not 
with  the  coverlets,  but  the  ornaments  of  the  beds.  My  lord 
abbot  can  never  go  more  than  four  leagues  from  his  home  with- 
out taking  all  his  furniture  with  him,  as  if  he  were  going  to 
the  wars,  or  about  to  cross  a  desert  where  necessaries  cannot  be 
had.  Is  it  quite  impossible  to  wash  one's  hands  in,  and  drink 
from,  the  same  vessel  ?  Will  not  your  candle  bum  anywhere 
but  in  that  gold  or  silver  candlestick  of  yours,  which  you  carry 
with  you  ?  Is  sleep  impossible  except  upon  a  variegated  mat- 
tress, or  under  a  foreign  coverlet  ?  Could  not  one  servant  har- 
ness the  miile, -wait  at  dinner,  and  make  the  bed?  If  such  a 
miiltitude  of  men  and  horses  is  indispensable,  why  not  at  least 
carry  with  us  oiir  necessaries,  and  thus  avoid  the  severe  burden 
we  are  to  our  hosts  ?     .     .     . 

By  the  sight  of  wonderful  and  costly  vanities  men  are 
prompted  to  give,  rather  than  to  pray.  Some  beautiful  picture 
of  a  saint  is  exhibited  —  and  the  brighter  the  colors  the  greater 
the   holiness   attributed  to  it:   men   run,   eager   to   kiss;    they  are 


SAINT   BERNARD   OF   CLAIRVAUX 


1825 


invited  to  give,  and  the  beautiful  is  more  admired  than  the 
sacred  is  revered.  In  the  churches  are  suspended,  not  coroncs^ 
but  wheels  studded  with  gems  and  surrounded  by  lights,  which 
are  scarcely  brighter  than  the  precious  stones  which  are  near 
them.  Instead  of  candlesticks,  we  behold  great  trees  of  brass 
fashioned  with  wonderful  skill,  and  glittering  as  much  through 
their  jewels  as  .their  lights.  What  do  you  suppose  is  the  object 
of  all  this  ?  The  repentance  of  the  contrite,  or  the  admiration 
of  the  gazers  ?  O  vanity  of  vanities !  but  not  more  vain  than 
foolish.  The  church's  walls  are  resplendent,  but  the  poor  are 
not  there.  .  ,  .  The  curious  find  wherewith  to  amuse  them- 
selves; the  wretched  find  no  stay  for  them  in  their  misery. 
Why  at  least  do  we  not  reverence  the  images  of  the  saints, 
with  which  the  very  pavement  we  walk  on  is  covered  ?  Often 
an  angel's  mouth  is  spit  into,  and  the  face  of  some  saint  trodden 
on  by  passers-by.  .  .  .  But  if  we  cannot  do  without  the 
images,  why  can  we  not  spare  the  brilliant  colors  ?  What  has 
all  this  to  do  with  monks,  with  professors  of  poverty,  with  men 
of  spiritual  minds  ? 

Again,  in  the  cloisters,  what  is  the  meaning  of  those  ridicu- 
lous monsters,  of  that  deformed  beauty,  that  beautiful  deformity, 
before  the  very  eyes  of  the  brethren  when  reading  ?  What  are 
disgusting  monkeys  there  for,  or  satyrs,  or  ferocious  lions,  or 
monstrous  centaurs,  or  spotted  tigers,  or  fighting  soldiers,  or 
huntsmen  sounding  the  bugle  ?  You  may  see  there  one  head 
with  many  bodies,  or  one  body  with  numerous  heads.  Here  is 
a  quadruped  with  a  serpent's  tail;  there  is  a  fish  with  a  beast's 
head;  there  a  creature,  in  front  a  horse,  behind  a  goat;  another 
has  horns  at  one  end,  and  a  horse's  tail  at  the  other.  In  fact, 
such  an  endless  variety  of  forms  appears  everywhere,  that  it  is 
more  pleasant  to  read  in  the  stonework  than  in  books,  and  to 
spend  the  day  in  admiring  these  oddities  than  in  meditating  on 
the  law  of  God.  Good  God!  if  we  are  not  ashamed  of  these 
absurdities,  why  do  we  not  grieve  at  the  cost  of  them  ? 
Ill— 115 


j826  saint    BERNARD   OF   CLAIRVAUX 

FROM   HIS   SERMON   ON   THE   DEATH    OF   GERARD 
«As  the  tents  of  Kedar,  as  the  curtains  of  Solomon. » — Sol.  Song  i.  5 

PERHAPS  both  members  of  the  comparison  —  viz.,  ^*As  the  tents 
of  Kedar,  as  the  curtains  of  Solomon  ^'  —  refer  only  to  the 
first  words,  ^^  I  am  black.  ^*  It  may  be,  however,  that  the 
simile  is  extended  to  both  clauses,  and  each  is  compared  with 
each.  The  former  sense  is  the  more  simple,  the  latter  the  more 
obscure.  Let  us  try  both,  beginning  with  the  latter,  which  seems 
the  more  difficult.  There  is  no  difficulty,  however,  in  the  first 
comparison,  "  I  am  black  as  the  tents  of  Kedar,  *^  but  only  in  the 
last.  For  Kedar,  which  is  interpreted  to  mean  ^*  darkness  '^  or 
"  gloom, '^  may  be  compared  with  blackness  justly  enough;  but 
the  curtains  of  Solomon  are  not  so  easily  likened  to  beauty. 
Moreover,  who  does  not  see  that  "  tents  ^^  fit  harmoniously  with 
the  comparison  ?  For  what  is  the  meaning  of  "  tents  '^  except 
our  bodies,  in  which  we  sojourn  for  a  time  ?  Nor  have  we  an 
abiding  city,  but  we  seek  one  to  come.  In  our  bodies,  as  under 
tents,  we  carry  on  warfare.  Truly,  we  are  violent  to  take  the 
kingdom.  Indeed,  the  life  of  man  here  on  earth  is  a  warfare; 
and  as  long  as  we  do  battle  in  this  body,  we  are  absent  from 
the  Lord, —  i.  e.,  from  the  light.  For  the  Lord  is  light;  and  so 
far  as  any  one  is  not  in  Him,  so  far  he  is  in  darkness,  i.  f.,  in 
Kedar.  Let  each  one  then  acknowledge  the  sorrowful  exclama- 
tion as  his  own:  —  *^Woe  is  me  that  my  sojourn  is  prolonged!  I 
have  dwelt  with  those  who  dwell  in  Kedar.  My  soul  hath  long 
sojourned  in  a  strange  land.*^  Therefore  this  habitation  of  the 
body  is  not  the  mansion  of  the  citizen,  nor  the  house  of  the 
native,  but  either  the  soldier's  tent  or  the  traveler's  inn.  This 
body,  I  say,  is  a  tent,  and  a  tent  of  Kedar,  because,  by  its  inter- 
ference, it  prevents  the  soul  from  beholding  the  infinite  light,  nor 
does  it  allow  her  to  see  the  light  at  all,  except  through  a  glass 
darkly,   and  not  face  to  face. 

Do  you  not  see  whence  blackness  comes  to  the  Church  — 
whence  a  certain  rust  cleaves  to  even  the  fairest  souls  ?  Doubt- 
less it  comes  from  the  tents  of  Kedar,  from  the  practice  of 
laborious  warfare,  from  the  long  continuance  of  a  painful  so- 
journ, from  the  straits  of  our  grievous  exile,  from  our  feeble, 
cumbersome  bodies;  for  the  corruptible  body  presseth  down  the 
soul,  and  the   earthly   tabernacle   weigheth   down   the   mind   that 


SAINT  BERNARD   OF   CLAIRVAUX  1 82  7 

museth  upon  many  things.  Therefore  the  souls'  desire  to  be 
loosed,  that  being  freed  from  the  body  they  may  fly  into  the 
embraces  of  Christ.  Wherefore  one  of  the  miserable  ones  said, 
groaning,  "  O  wretched  man  that  I  am,  who  shall  deliver  me 
from  the  body  of  this  death !  **  For  a  soul  of  this  kind  knoweth 
that,  while  in  the  tents  of  Kedar,  she  cannot  be  entirely  free 
from  spot  or  wrinkle,  nor  from  stains  of  blackness,  and  wishes 
to  go  forth  and  to  put  them  off.  And  here  we  have  the  reason 
why  the  spouse  calls  herself  black  as  the  tents  of  Kedar.  But 
now,  how  is  she  beautiful  as  the  curtains  of  Solomon  ?  Behind 
these  curtains  I  feel  that  an  indescribable  holiness  and  sub- 
limity are  veiled,  which  I  dare  not  presume  to  touch,  save  at 
the  command  of  Him  who  shrouded  and  sealed  the  mystery. 
For  I  have  read.  He  that  is  a  searcher  of  Majesty  shall  be  over- 
whelmed with  the  glor}\  I  pass  on  therefore.  It  will  devolve 
on  you,  meanwhile,  to  obtain  grace  by  your  prayers,  that  we 
may  the  more  readily,  because  more  confidently,  recur  to  a  sub- 
ject which  needs  attentive  minds;  and  it  may  be  that  the  pious 
knocker  at  the  door  will  discover  what  the  bold  explorer  seeks 
in  vain. 


1828 


BERNARD   OF   CLUNY 

Twelfth  Century 
BY   WILLIAM   C.    PRIME 

fiTTLE  is  known  concerning  the  monk  Bernard,  sometimes 
called  Bernard  of  Morlay  and  sometimes  Bernard  of  Cluny. 
The  former  name  is  probably  derived  from  the  place  of  his 
origin,  the  latter  from  the  fact  that  in  the  introduction  to  his  poem 
<  De  Contemptu  Mimdi  ^  he  describes  himself  as  a  brother  of  the 
monks  of  Cluny.  He  lived  in  the  twelfth  century,  a  period  of  much 
learning  in  the  church;  and  that  he  was  himself  a  man  of  broad 
scholarship  and  brilliant  abilities,  the  Latin  poem,  his  only  surviving 
■y-ork,   abundantly  testifies. 

This  poem,  divided  into  three  books,  consists  in  all  of  about  three 
thousand  lines.  It  is  introduced  by  a  short  address  in  prose  to 
Father  Peter,  the  abbot  of  the  monastery,  in  which  the  author 
describes  the  peculiar  operations  of  his  mind  in  undertaking  and 
accomplishing  his  marvelous  poem.  He  believes  and  asserts,  ^'not 
arrogantly,  but  in  all  humility  and  therefore  boldly,"  that  he  had 
divine  aid.  ^^  Unless  the  spirit  of  wisdom  and  understanding  had  been 
with  me  and  filled  me,  I  had  never  been  able  to  construct  so  long  a 
work  in  such  a  difficult  metre.'* 

This  metre  is  peculiar.  In  technical  terms  each  line  consists  of 
three  parts:  the  first  part  including  two  dactyls,  the  second  part  two 
dactyls,  the  third  part  one  dactyl  and  one  trochee.  The  final  trochee, 
a  long  and  a  short  syllable,  rhymes  with  the  following  or  preceding 
line.  There  is  also  a  rhyme,  in  each  line,  of  the  second  dactyl  with 
the  fourth.  This  will  be  made  plain  to  the  ordinary  reader  by 
quoting  the  first  two  lines  of  the  poem,  divided  into  feet:  — 

Hora  no  (  vissima  |  tempora  |  pessima  |  sunt,  vigi  |  lemus; 
Ecce  mi  |  naciter  |  imminet  |  arbiter  |  ille  su  |  premus. 

The  adoption  of  such  a  metre  would  seem  to  be  a  clog  on  flexi- 
bility and  force  of  expression.  But  in  this  poem  it  is  not  so.  The 
author  rejoices  in  absolute  freedom  of  diction.  The  rhythm  and 
rhyme  alike  lend  themselves  to  the  uses,  now  of  bitter  satire  and 
revilings,  now  of  overpowering  hope  and  exultant  joy. 

The  title  scarcely  gives  an  idea  of  the  subject-matter  of  the 
poem.  The  old  Benedictine,  living  for  the  time  in  his  cell,  had 
nevertheless  known  the  world  of  his  day,   had  lived  in  it  and  been 


BERNARD  OF  CLUNY 


1829 


of  it.  To  him  it  seemed  an  evil  world,  fnll  of  crimes,  of  moils,  of 
deceits,  of  abominations;  the  Church  seemed  corrupt,  venal,  shame- 
less, and  Rome  the  centre  and  the  soul  of  this  accursed  world.  Pon- 
dering on  these  conditions,  the  monk  turned  his  weary  gaze  toward 
the  celestial  country,  the  country  of  purity  and  peace,  and  to  the 
King  on  his  throne,  the  centre  and  source  of  eternal  beatitude,  'ilie 
contrast,  on  which  he  dwelt  for  a  long  time,  filled  him  on  the  one 
hand  with  burning  indignation,  on  the  other  with  entrancing  visions 
and  longings. 

At  last  he  broke  out  into  magnificent  poetry.  It  is  not  possible 
to  translate  him  into  any  other  language  than  the  Latin  in  which 
he  wrote,  and  preserve  any  of  the  grandeur  and  beauty  which  result 
from  the  union  of  ardent  thought  with  almost  miraculous  music  of 
language.  Dr..  Neale  aptly  speaks  of  the  majestic  sweetness  which 
invests  Bernard's  poem.  The  expression  applies  specially  to  those 
passages,  abounding  in  all  parts  of  the  poem,  in  which  he  describes 
the  glory  and  the  peace  of  the  better  country.  Many  of  these  have 
been  translated  or  closely  imitated  by  Dr.  Neale,  with  such  excellent 
effect  that  several  hymns  which  are  very  popular  in  churches  of 
various  denominations  have  been  constructed  from  Dr.  Neale's  trans- 
lations. Other  portions  of  the  poem,  especially  those  in  which  the 
vices  and  crimes  of  the  Rome  of  that  time  are  denounced  and  lashed 
with  unsparing  severity,  have  never  been  translated,  and  are  not 
likely  ever  to  be,  because  of  the  impossibility  of  preserving  in  Eng- 
lish the  peculiar  force  of  the  metre;  and  translation  without  this 
would  be  of  small  value.  The  fire  of  the  descriptions  of  heaven 
is  increased  by  the  contrast  in  which  they  stand  with  descriptions 
of  Rome  in  the  twelfth  century.  Here,  for  example,  is  a  passage 
addressed  to  Rome: — 

«Fas  mihi  dicere,  fas  mihi  scribere  <Roma  fuisti,> 
Obruta  moenibus,  obruta  moribus,  occubuisti. 
Urbs  ruis  inclita,  tam  mode  subdita,  quam  prius  alta; 
Quo  prius  altior,  tam  mode  pressior,  et  labefacta. 
Fas  mihi  scribere,  fas  mihi  dicere  <Roma,  peristi.* 
Sunt  tua  moenia  vociferantia  <Roma,  ruisti.>» 

And  here  is  one  addressed  to  the  City  of  God:  — 

«0  sine  luxibus,  O  sine  luctibus,  O  sine  lite, 
Splendida  curia,  florida  patria,  patria  vitae. 
Urbs  Syon  inclita,  patria  condita  littore  tuto, 
Te  peto,  te  colo,  te  flagro,  te  volo,  canto,  salute.  >> 

While  no  translation  exists  of  this  remarkable  work,  nor  indeed 
can   be   made   to   reproduce    the   power   and  melody   of  the   original. 


1830  BERNARD   OF  CLUNY 

yet  a  very  good  idea  of  its  spirit  may  be  had  from  the  work  of  Dr. 
J.  Mason  Neale,  who  made  from  selected  portions  this  English  poem, 
which  is  very  much  more  than  what  he  modestly  called  it,  "a  close 
imitation.**  Dr.  Neale  has  made  no  attempt  to  reproduce  the  metre 
of  the  original. 


■r 


BRIEF    LIFE   IS   HERE   OUR   PORTION 

BRIEF  life  is  here  our  portion, 
Brief  sorrow,  short-lived  care: 
The  Life  that  knows  no  ending, 
The  tearless  Life,  is  there: 
O  happy  retribution. 

Short  toil,  eternal  rest! 
For  mortals  and  for  sinners 

A  mansion  with  the  Blest ! 
That  we  should  look,  poor  wanderers, 

To  have  our  home  on  high ! 
That  worms  should  seek  for  dwellings 

Beyond  the  starry  sky! 
And  now  we  fight  the  battle, 

And  then  we  wear  the  Crown 
Of  full  and  everlasting 

And  passionless  renown : 
Then  glory,  yet  imheard  of. 

Shall  shed  abroad  its  ray; 
Resolving  all  enigmas. 

An  endless  Sabbath-day. 
Then,  then,  from  his  oppressors 

The  Hebrew  shall  go  free, 
And  celebrate  in  triumph 

The  year  of  Jubilee : 
And  the  sun-lit  land  that  recks  not 

Of  tempest  or  of  fight 
Shall  fold  within  its  bosom 

Each  happy  Israelite. 
'Midst  power  that  knows  no  limit, 

And  wisdom  free  from  bound. 


BERNARD   OF  CLUNY 

The  Beatific  Vision 

Shall  glad  the  Saints  around; 
And  peace,  for  war  is  needless, 

And  rest,  for  storm  is  past, 
And  goal  from  finished  labor. 

And  anchorage  at  last. 
There  God,  my  King  and  Portion, 

In  fullness  of  His  Grace, 
Shall  we  behold  forever. 

And  worship  face  to  face; 
There  Jacob  into  Israel, 

From  earthlier  self  estranged, 
And  Leah  into  Rachel 

Forever  shall  be  changed; 
There  all  the  halls  of  Syon 

For  aye  shall  be  complete: 
And  in  the  land  of  Beauty 

All  things  of  beauty  meet. 
To  thee,  O  dear,  dear  country! 

Mine  eyes  their  vigils  keep; 
For  very  love,  beholding 

Thy  happy  name,  they  weep: 
The  mention  of  Thy  glory 

Is  unction  to  the  breast. 
And  medicine  in  sickness, 

And  love,  and  life,  and  rest. 
O  one,  O  onely  mansion! 

O  Paradise  of  joy! 
Where  tears  are  ever  banished. 

And  smiles  have  no  alloy: 
Beside  thy  living  waters 

All  plants  are,  great  and  small; 
The  cedar  of  the  forest. 

The  hyssop  of  the  wall; 
"With  jaspers  glow  thy  bulwarks. 

Thy  streets  with  emeralds  blaze; 
The  sardius  and  the  topaz 

Unite  in  thee  their  rays; 
Thine  ageless  walls  are  bonded 

With  amethyst  tmpriced; 
Thy  saints  build  up  its  fabric. 

And  the  Corner-stone  is  Christ. 
Thou  hast  no  shore,  fair  Ocean! 

Thou  hast  no  time,  bright  Day! 


1831 


1^32  BERNARD   OF   CLUNY 

Dear  fountain  of  refreshment 

To  pilgrims  far  away! 
Upon  the  Rock  of  Ages 

They  raise  thy  holy  Tower. 
Thine  is  the  Victor's  laurel, 

And  thine  the  golden  dower. 
Thou  feel'st  in  mystic  rapture, 

O  Bride  that  know'st  no  guile. 
The  Prince's  sweetest  kisses. 

The  Prince's  loveliest  smile. 
Unfading  lilies,  bracelets 

Of  living  pearl,  thine  own; 
The  Lamb  is  ever  near  thee. 

The  Bridegroom  thine  alone; 
And  all  thine  endless  leisure 

In  sweetest  accents  sings 
The  ills  that  were  thy  merit. 

The  joys  that  are  thy  King's. 
Jerusalem  the  golden ! 

With  milk  and  honey  blest, 
Beneath  thy  contemplation 

Sink  heart  and  voice  opprest; 
I  know  not,  oh,  I  know  not 

What  social  joys  are  there, 
What  radiancy  of  glory. 

What  light  beyond  compare; 
And  when  I  fain  would  sing  them, 

My  spirit  fails  and  faints. 
And  vainly  would  it  image 

The  assembly  of  the  Saints. 
They  stand,   those  halls  of  Syon, 

All  jubilant  with  song, 
And  bright  with  many  an  Angel, 

And  many  a  Martyr  throng; 
The  Prince  is  ever  in  them, 

The  light  is  aye  serene; 
The  Pastures  of  the   Blessed 
I  Are  decked  in  glorious 'sheen; 

There  is  the  Throne  of  David, 

And  there,   from  toil  released. 
The  shout  of  them  that  triumph, 

The  song  of  them  that  feast; 
And  they,  beneath  their  Leader, 

Who  conquered  in  the  fight, 


BER'NARD   OF  CLUNY  1833 

For  ever  and  for  ever 

Are  clad  in  robes  of  white. 
Jerusalem  the  glorious! 

The  glory  of  the  elect, 
O  dear  and  future  vision 

That  eager  hearts  expect: 
Ev'n  now  by  faith  I  see  thee, 

Ev'n  here  thy  walls  discern; 
To  thee  my  thoughts  are  kindled 

And  strive  and  pant  and  yearn: 
Jerusalem  the  onely. 

That  look'st  from  Heav'n  below, 
In  thee  is  all  my  glory, 

In  me  is  all  my  woe: 
And  though  my  body  may  not. 

My  spirit  seeks  thee  fain; 
Till  flesh  and  earth  return  me 

To  earth  and  flesh  again. 
O  Land  that  seest  no  sorrow! 

O  State  that  fear'st  no  strife! 
0  princely  bowers!  O  Land  of  flowers! 

O  realm  and  Home  of  Life! 


i834 


JULIANA  BERNERS 

(Fifteenth  Century) 

jBOUT  the  year  1475  one  William  Caxton,  a  prosperous  English 
wool  merchant  of  good  standing  and  repute,  began  printing 
books.  The  art  which  he  introduced  into  his  native  country 
was  quickly  taken  up  by  others;  first,  it  seems,  by  certain  monks  at 
St.  Albans,  and  shortly  afterward  by  Wynkyn  de  Worde,  who  had 
been  an  apprentice  to  Caxton.  In  i486  the  press  at  St.  Albans  issued 
two  books  printed  in  English,  of  which  one  was  entitled  <The  Boke 
of  St.  Albans.^     Of   this  volume  only  three  perfect  copies  are  known 

to  exist.  It  is  a  compilation  of  treatises  on 
hawking,  on  hunting,  and  on  heraldry,  and 
contained  but  little  evidence  as  to  their 
authorship.  Ten  years  later  Wynkyn  de 
Worde  reprinted  the  work  with  additions, 
under  the  following  elaborate  title,  in  the 
fashion  of  the  time  :  —  ^  Treatyse  perteyn- 
ynge  to  Hawkynge,  Huntynge,  and  Fyssh- 
3'nge  with  an  Angle;  also  a  right  noble 
Treatyse  on  the  Lynage  of  Coote  Armeris; 
ending  with  a  Treatyse  which  specyfyeth 
of  Blasyng  of  Armys.  * 

The  authorship  of  this  volume,  one  of 
the  earliest  books  printed  in  the  English 
language,  has  generally  been  ascribed  to  a  certain  (or  uncertain) 
Juliana  Berners,  Bernes,  or  Barnes,  who  lived  in  the  early  part  of 
the  fifteenth  century,  and  who  is  reputed  to  have  been  prioress  of  the 
Nunnery  of  Sopwell,  —  long  since  in  ruins,  —  near  St.  Albans,  and 
close  to  the  little  river  Ver,  which  still  conceals  in  its  quiet  pools 
the  speckled  trout.  If  this  attribution  be  correct,  Dame  Berners  was 
the  first  woman  to  write  a  book  in  English.  Although  the  question 
of  the  authorship  is  by  no  means  settled,  yet  it  is  clear  that  the 
printer  believed  the  treatise  on  hunting  to  have  been  written  by  this 
lady,  and  the  critics  now  generally  assign  a  portion  at  least  of  the 
volume  to  her.  In  the  sixteenth  century  the  book  became  very 
popular,  and  was  reprinted  many  times. 

Of  the  several  treatises  it  contains,  that  on  fishing  has  the 
greatest  interest,  an  interest  increased  by  the  fact  that  it  probably 
suggested  <  The  Compleat  Angler  *  of  Izaak  Walton,  which  appeared 
one  hundred  and  sixty  years  later. 


Juliana  Berners 


JULIANA    BERNERS  1835 

HERE   BEGYNNYTH 
The  Treatyse  of  Fysshynge  wyth  an  Angle 

SALOMON  in  his  parablys  sayth  that  a  glad  spyryte  makyth  a 
flourynge  aege,  that  is  a  fayre  aege  and  a  longe.  And  syth 
it  is  soo:  I  aske  this  questyon,  whiche  ben  the  meanes  and 
the  causes  that  enduce  a  man  in  to  a  mery  spyryte:  Truly  to  my 
beste  dyscrecon  it  seemeth  good  dysportes  and  honest  gamys  in 
whom  a  man  Joyeth  without  any  repentaunce  after. 

Thenne  folo\vyth  it  yt  gode  dysportes  and  honest  games  Den 
cause  of  mannys  fayr  aege  and  longe  life.  And  therefore  now 
woll  I  chose  of  foure  good  disportes  and  honest  gamys,  that  is  to 
wyte'.  of  huntynge:  hawkynge:  fysshynge:  and  foulynge.  The 
best  to  my  symple  dyscrecon  whyche  is  fysshynge:  called  Ang- 
lynge  wyth  a  rodde:  and  a  lyne  and  an  hoke.  And  thereof  to 
treate  as  my  symple  wytte  may  suffyce:  both  for  the  said  reason 
of  Salomon  and  also  for  the  reason  that  phisyk  makyth  in  this 
wyse.  Si  tibi  deficiant  uiedici  tibi  fiant:  lice  tria  mens  leta  labor 
et  moderata  dicta.  Ye  shall  vnderstonde  that  this  is  for  to  saye, 
Yf  a  man  lacke  leche  or  medicyne  he^  shall  make  thre  thynges 
his  leche  and  medycyne:  and  he  shall  nede  neuer  no  moo.  The 
fyrste  of  theym  is  a  mery  thought.  The  seconde  is  labour  not 
outrageo.     The  thyrd  is  dyete  mesurable.     .     .     . 

Here  folowyth  the  order  made  to  all  those  whiche  shall  haue 
the  vnderstondynge  of  this  forsayd  treatyse  &  vse  it  for  theyr 
pleasures. 

Ye  that  can  angle  &  take  fysshe  to  your  pleasures  as  this 
forsayd  treatyse  techyth  &  shewyth  you:  I  charge  &  requyre 
you  in  the  name  of  alle  noble  men  that  ye  fysshe  not  in  noo 
poore  mannes  seuerall  water:  as  his  ponde:  stewe:  or  other 
necessary  thynges  to  kepe  fysshe  in  wythout  his  lycence  &  good 
wyll.  Nor  that  ye  vse  not  to  breke  noo  mannys  gynnys  lyenge 
in  theyr  weares  &  in  other  places  dve  vuto  theym.  Ne  to  take 
the  fysshe  awaye  that  is  taken  in  theym.  For  after  a  fysshe  is 
taken  in  a  mannys  gynne  yf  the  gynne  be  layed  in  the  comyn 
waters:  or  elles  in  suche  waters  as  he  hireth,  it  is  his  owne 
propre  goodes.  And  yf  ye  take  it  awaye  ye  robbe  hym:  whyche 
is  a  ryght  shamfull  dede  to  ony  noble  man  to  do  yt  that  theuys 
&  brybours  done:  whyche  are  punysshed  for  theyr  evyll  dedes 
by  the  necke  &  other  wyse  whan  they  maye  be  aspyed  & 
taken.     And    also    yf   ye    do    in    lyke    manere    as    this    treatise 


J  836  JULIANA   BERNERS 

shewyth  you:  ye  shal  haue  no  nedc  to  take  of  other  menys: 
whiles  ye  shal  haue  ynough  of  your  owne  takyng  yf  ye  lyste  to 
labour  therfore.  Whyche  shall  be  to  you  a  very  pleasure  to  se 
the  fayr  bryght  shynynge  sealyd  fysshcs  dysceyved  by  your 
crafty  ineanes  &  drawen  vpon  londe.  Also  that  ye  breke  noo 
mannys  hegg-ys  in  goynge  abowte  your  dysportes:  ne  opyn 
noo  mannes  gates  but  that  ye  shytte  theym  agayn.  Also  ye 
shall  not  vse  this  forsayd  crafty  dysporte  for  no  covety  senes  to 
thencreasynge  &  sparynge  of  your  money  oonly,  but  pryncypally 
for  your  solace  &  to  caiise  the  helthe  of  your  body,  and  spe- 
cyally  of  your  soule.  For  whanne  ye  purpoos  to  goo  on  your 
disportes  in  fysshyng  ye  woU  not  dcsyre  gretly  many  persones 
wyth  you,  whiche  myghte  lette  you  of  your  game.  And  thenne 
ye  maye  serue  God  deuowtly  in  sayenge  affectuously  youre  cus- 
tumable  prayer.  And  thus  doynge  ye  shall  eschewe  &  voyde 
many  vices,  as  ydylnes  whyche  is  pryncypall  cauSe  to  enduce 
man  to  many  other  vyces,   as  it  is  ryght  well  knowen. 

Also  ye  shall  not  be  to  rauenous  in  takyng  of  your  sayd 
game  as  to  moche  at  one  tyme:  whyche  ye  maye  lyghtly  doo, 
yf  ye  doo  in  euery  poynt  as  this  present  treatyse  shewyth  you  in 
euery  poynt,  whyche  lyghtly  be  occasyon  to  dystroye  your  owne 
dysportes  &  other  mennys  also.  As  whan  ye  haue  a  suffycyent 
mese  ye  sholde  coveyte  nomore  as  at  that  tyme.  Also  ye  shall 
besye  yourselfe  to  nouryssh  the  game  in  all  that  ye  maye:  &  to 
dystroye  all  such  thynges  as  ben  devourers  of  it.  And  all  those 
that  done  after  this  rule  shall  haue  the  blessynge  of  god  & 
saynt  Petyr,  whyche  be  theym  graunte  that  wyth  his  precyous 
blood  vs  boughte. 

And  for  by  cause  that  this  present  treatyse  sholde  not  come  to 
the  hondys  of  eche  ydle  persone  whyche  wolde  desire  it  yf  it 
were  enpryntyd  allone  by  itself  &  put  in  a  lytyll  plaunflet  ther- 
fore I  have  compylyd  it  in  a  greter  volume  of  dyverse  bokys 
concernynge  to  gentyll  &  noble  men  to  the  entent  that  the  for- 
sayd ydle  persones  whyche  sholde  have  but  lytyll  mesure  in  the 
sayd  dysporte  of  fyshyng  sholde  not  by  this  meane  utterly 
dystroye  it. 

EMPRYNTED    AT    WESTMESTRE    BY    WYNKYN    THE    WORDE    THE    YERE   THYN' 
CARNACON   OF   OUR   LORD    M.CCCC.LXXXXVI. 

Reprinted  by  Thomas  White,  Crane  Court 
MDCCCXXVII. 


i837 


WALTER    BESANT 
(1838-1901) 

Salter  Besant,  born  in  Portsmouth,  England,  in  1838,  did  no*L 
begin  his  career  as  a  novelist  till  he  was  thirty  years  old. 
His  preparation  for  the  works  that  possess  so  certain  a 
maturity  of  execution,  with  as  certain  an  ideal  of  performance,  was 
made  at  King's  College,  London,  and  afterwards  at  Christ's  College, 
Cambridge,  where  he  took  mathematical  honors.  Abandoning  his 
idea  of  entering  the  Church,  he  taught  for  seven  years  in  the  Royal 
College  of  Mauritius.  Ill  health  compelled  his  return  to  England, 
and  he  then  took  up  literature  as  a  pro- 
fession. His  first  novel  he  had  the  courage 
to  burn  when  the  first  publisher  to  whom 
he  showed  it  refused  it. 

But  the  succeeding  years  brought  forth 
*  Studies  in  Early  French  Poetry,^  a  delicate 
and  scholarly  series  of  essays;  an  edition 
of  Rabelais,  of  whom  he  wrote  a  biography, 
and  in  collaboration  with  Professor  Palmer, 
a  (History  of  Jerusalem,)  a  work  for  which 
he  had  equipped  himself  when  secretary  of 
the  Palestine  Exploration  Fund. 

Young  Besant  was  also  a  student  in 
another  special  field.  He  knew  his  Dickens 
as  no  other  undergraduate  in  the  University  knew  that  branch  of 
polite  literature,  and  passed  an  examination  on  the  (Pickwick  Papers) 
which  the  author  declared  that  he  himself  would  have  failed  in.  By 
these  processes  Besant  fitted  himself  mentally  and  socially  for  the 
task  of  story-telling.  The  relations  of  a  man  of  letters  to  the  rest 
of  the  world  are  comprehensively  revealed  in  the  long  list  of  his 
novels. 

From  the  beginning  he  was  one  who  comes  with  a  tale  *^  which 
holdeth  children  from  play  and  old  men  from  the  chimney  corner  '^ ; 
nor  is  the  charm  lessened  by  the  sense  of  a  living  and  kindly  voice 
addressing  the  hearer.  His  novels  are  easy  reading,  and  do  not  con- 
tain an  obscure  sentence.  As  art  is  an  expression  of  the  artist's 
mind,  and  not  a  rigid  ecclesiastical  canon,  it  may  be  expressed  in  as 
many  formulas  as  there  are  artists.  Therefore,  while  to  few  readers 
life  casts  the  rosy  reflection  that  we  have  learned  to  call  Besantine, 
one  would  not  wish  it  to  disappear  nor  to  be  discredited. 


Walter   Besant 


1838  WALTER    BESANT 

It  was  in  the  year  1769  that  Walter  Besant,  by  a  happy  chance, 
made  the  acquaintance  of  James  Rice,  the  editor  of  Once  a  Week, 
and  became  a  contributor  to  that  magazine.  In  1S71  that  literary 
partnership  between  them  began,  which  is  interesting  in  the  history 
of  collaboration.  Rice  had  been  a  barrister,  and  added  legal  lore  to 
Bcsant's  varied  and  accurate  literary  equipment.  The  brilliant  scries 
of  novels  that  followed  includes  (Ready-Money  Mortiboy,)  (My 
Little  Girl,)  (With  Harp  and  Crown,)  (The  Golden  Butterfly,)  (The 
Seamy  Side,)  and  (The  Chaplain  of  the  Fleet.)  The  latter  story, 
that  of  an  innocent  young  country  girl  left  to  the  guardianship  of  her 
uncle,  chaplain  of  the  Fleet  prison,  by  the  death  of  her  father,  is 
delicately  and  surprisingly  original.  The  influence  of  Dickens  is 
felt  in  the  structure  of  the  story,  and  the  faithful,  almost  photo- 
graphic fidelity  to  locality  betrays  in  whose  footsteps  the  authors 
have  followed;  but  the  chaplain,  though  he  belongs  to  a  family 
whose  features  are  familiar  to  the  readers  of  (Little  Dorrit)  and 
(Great  Expectations,)  has  not  existed  until  he  appears  in  these 
pages,  —  pompous,  clever,  and  without  principle,  but  not  lacking  in 
natural  affection.  The  young  girl  whose  guileless  belief  in  everybody 
forces  the  worst  people  to  assume  the  characters  her  purity  and  in- 
nocence endows  them  with,  is  to  the  foul  prison  what  Picciola  was 
to  Charney.  Nor  will  the  moralist  find  fault  with  the  author 
whose  kind  heart  teaches  him  to  include  misfortune  in  his  catalogue 
of  virtues. 

Rice  died  in  1882,  and  (All  Sorts  and  Conditions  of  Men,)  Bcsant's 
first  independent  novel,  appeared  the  same  year.  It  is  a  novel  with 
a  purpose,  and  accomplished  its  purpose  because  an  artist's  hand  was 
necessary  to  paint  the  picture  of  East  London  that  met  with  such  a 
response  as  the  People's  Palace.  The  appeal  to  philanthropy  was  a 
new  one.  It  was  a  plea  for  a  little  more  of  the  pleasures  and  graces 
of  life  for  the  two  million. of  people  who  inhabit  the  east  end  of  the  great 
city.  It  is  not  a  picture  of  life  in  the  lowest  phases,  where  the  scenes 
are  as  dramatic  as  in  the  highest  social  world,  but  a  story  of  human 
life;  the  nobility,  the  meanness,  the  pathos  of  it  in  hopelessly  common- 
place surroundings,  where  the  fight  is  not  a  hand-to-hand  struggle  with 
bitter  poverty  or  crime,  but  with  dullness  and  monotony.  The  charac- 
ters in  (All  Sorts  and  Conditions  of  ]\Ien)  are  possibly  more  typical 
than  real,  but  one  hesitates  to  question  either  characters  or  situation. 
The  ((impossible  story))  has  become  true,  and  the  vision  that  the  en- 
thusiastic young  hero  and  heroine  dream  has  materialized  into  a  noble 
reality. 

(The  Children  of  Gibcon)  (1884)  and  (The  World  Went  Very  Well 
Then)  (1885)  were  written  with  the  same  philanthropic  purpose;  but  if 
Sir  Walter  Besant  had  not  been  first  of  all  a  story-teller,  the  possessor  of 


WALTER   BESANT 


1839 


a  living  voice  that  holds  one  spellbound  till  he  has  finished  his  tale, 
the  reader  would  be  more  sensible  of  the  wide  knowledge  of  the 
novelist,   and  his  familiarity  with  life  in  its  varied  forms. 

Here  are  about  thirty  novels,  displaying  an  intimate  knowledge 
of  many  crafts,  trades,  and  professions,  the  ways  of  landsman  and 
voyager,  of  country  and  town,  of  the  new  world  and  the  old,  of 
modern  charlatanism  as  shown  in  <  Herr  Paulus,^  of  the  "woman 
question**  among  London  Jews  as  in  the  <  Rebel  Queen,*  and  the 
suggestioir  of  the  repose  and  sufficiency  of  life's  simple  needs  as  told 
in  'Call  Her  Mine*  and  'Celia's  Arbor.* 

In  the  *■  Ivory  Gate  *  the  hero  is  the  victim  of  a  remarkable  hallu- 
cination ;  in  the  story  of  ^  The  Inner  House  *  the  plummet  of  sugges- 
tion plunges  into  depths  not  sounded  before,  and  the  soul's  regeneration 
is  unfolded  in  the  loveliest  of  parables. 

The  range  of  Sir  Walter  Besant  reaches  from  the  somewhat  con- 
ventionalized 'Dorothy  Forster*  to  'St.  Katharine's  Tower,*  where 
deep  tragedy  approaches  the  melodramatic,  or  from  the  fascination  of 
'  The  Master  Craftsman  *  to  the  '  Wapping  Idyll  *  of  the  heaps  of 
miser's  treasure.  There  is  largeness  of  stroke  in  this  list,  and  a  wide 
prospect.  His  humor  is  of  the  cheerful  outdoor  kind,  and  the  laugh 
is  at  foibles  rather  than  weakness.  He  pays  little  attention  to  fashion 
in  literature,   except  to  give  a  good-natured  nod  to  a  passing  fad. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  classify  him  under  any  school.  His  stories 
are  not  analytical,  nor  is  one  conscious  of  that  painstaking  fidelity  to 
art  which  is  no  longer  classed  among  the  minor  virtues.  When  he 
fights,  it  is  with  wrong  and  oppression  and  the  cheerless  monotony 
of  the  lives  of  the  poor;  but  he  fights  classes  rather  than  individuals, 
although  certain  characters  like  Fielding  the  plagiarist,  in  '  Armorel 
of  Lyonesse,*  are  studied  from  life.  The  village  of  bankrupts  in  'All 
in  a  Garden  Fair*  is  a  whimsical  conceit,  like  the  disguise  of  Angela 
in  'AH  Sorts  and  Conditions  of  Men,*  and  the  double  identity  of 
Edmund  Gray  in  'The  Ivory  Gate.*  In  reading  Besant  we -are  con- 
stantly reminded  that  humanity  is  wider  than  the  world;  and  though 
its  simplest  facts  are  its  greatest,  there  is  both  interest  and  edification 
in  eccentricities. 

In  1895  he  was  made  a  baronet,  and  was  until  his  death  in  1901 
president  of  the  Society  of  Authors,  of  whom  he  was  a  gallant  champion 
against  the  publishers. 

The  last  years  of  his  life  were  given  to  a  monumental  series  of  de- 
scriptions of  London  from  the  earliest  times  to  the  end  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  begun  by  him  in  1892,  and  carried  to  completion  by  other 
hands  after  his  death. 


1840 


WALTER   BESANT 


OLD-TIMK    LONDON 
From  Sir  Walter  Besant's  <  London^:  copyrighted  1892,  by  Harper  and  Brothel's 

THE  London  hoi;se,  cither  in  Saxon  or  Norman  time,  presented 
no  kind  of  resemblance  to  the  Roman  villa.  It  had  no 
cloisters,  no  hypocaust,  no  suite  or  sequence  of  rooms. 
This  imlikeness  is  another  proof,  if  any  were  wanting-,  that  the 
continuity  of  tenure  had  been  wholly  broken.  If  tKe  Saxons 
went  into  London,  as  has  been  suggested,  peaceably,  and  left  the 
people  to  carry  on  their  old  life  and  their  trade  in  their  own 
way,  the  Roman  and  British  architecture  —  no  new  thing,  but  a 
style  grown  up  in  course  of  years  and  found  fitted  to  the  cli- 
mate'—  would  certainly  have  remained.  That,  however,  was  not 
the  case.  The  Englishman  developed  his  house  from  the  patri- 
archal idea. 

First,  there  was  the  common  hall;  in  this  the  household  lived, 
fed,  transacted  business,  and  made  their  cheer  in  the  evenings. 
It  was  built  of  timber,  and  to  keep  out  the  cold  draughts  it  was 
afterwards  lined  with  tapestry.  At  first  they  used  simple  cloths, 
which  in  great  houses  were  embroidered  and  painted;  perches  of 
various  kinds  were  affixed  to  the  walls,  whereon  the  weapons, 
the  musical  instruments,  the  cloaks,  etc.,  were  hung  up.  The 
lord  and  lady  sat  on  a  high  seat;  not,  I  am  inclined  to  think,  on 
a  dais  at  the  end  of  the  hall,  which  would  have  been  cold  for 
them,  but  on  a  great  chair  near  the  fire,  which  was  burning  in 
the  middle  of  the  hall.  This  fashion  long  continued.  I  have 
myself  seen  a  college  hall  warmed  by  a  fire  in  a  brazier  burn- 
ing under  the  lantern  of  the  hall.  The  furniture  consisted  of 
benches';  the  table  was  laid  on  trestles,  spread  with  a  white 
cloth,  and  removed  after  dinner;  the  hall  was. open  to  all  who 
came,  on  condition  that  the  guest  should  leave  his  weapons  at 
the  door. 

The  floor  was  covered  with  reeds,  which  made  a  clean,  soft, 
and  warm  carpet,  on  which  the  company  could,  if  they  pleased, 
lie  round  the  fire.  They  had  carpets  or  rugs  also,  but  reeds  were 
commonly  used.  The  traveler  who  chances  to  find  himself  at 
the  ancient  and  most  interesting  town  of  Kingston-on-Hull,  which 
very  few  English  people,  and  still  fewer  Americans,  have  the 
curiosity  to  explore,  should  visit  the  Trinity  House.  There, 
among   many  interesting  things,   he  will  find  a  hall  where  reeds 


WALTER   BESANT  1841 

are  still  spread,  but  no  longer  so  thickly  as  to  form  a  complete 
carpet.      I  believe  this  to  be  the  last  survival  of  the  reed  carpet. 

The  times  of  meals  were:  the  breakfast  at  about  nine;  the 
"noon-meat,^*  or  dinner,  at  twelve;  and  the  "even-meat,"  or  sup- 
per, probably  at  a  movable  time,  depending  on  the  length  of  the 
day.  When  lighting  was  costly  and  candles  were  scarce,  the 
hours  of  sleep  would  be  naturally  longer  in  winter  than  in  the 
summer. 

In  their  manner  of  living  the  Saxons  were  fond  of  vege- 
tables, especially  of  the  leek,  onion,  and  garlic.  Beans  they  also 
had  (these  were  introduced  probably  at  the  time  when  they  com- 
menced intercourse  with  the  outer  world),  pease,  radishes,  turnips, 
parsley,  mint,  sage,  cress,  rue,  and  other  herbs.  They  had 
nearly  all  our  modern  fruits,  though  many  show  by  their  names, 
which  are  Latin  or  Norman,  a  later  introduction.  They  made 
use  of  butter,  honey,  an4  cheese.  They  drank  ale  and  mead. 
The  latter  is  still  made,  but  in  small  quantities,  in  Somerset  and 
Hereford  shires.  The  Normans  brought  over  the  custom,  of 
drinking    wine. 

In  the  earliest  times  the  whole  family  slept  in  the  common 
hall.  The  first  improvement  was  the  erection  of  the  solar,  oi' 
upper  chamber.  This  was  above  the  hall,  or  a  portion  of  it,  or 
over  the  kitchen  and  buttery  attached  to  the  hall.  The  arrange- 
ment may  be  still  observed  in  many  of  the  old  colleges  of  Oxford 
or  Cambridge.  The  solar  was  first  the  sleeping-room  of  the  lord 
and  lady;  though  afterward  it  served  not  only  this  purpose,  but 
also  for  an  ante-chamber  to  the  dormitory  of  the  daughters  and 
the  maid-servants.  The  men  of  the  household  still  slept  in  the 
hall  below.  Later  on,  bed  recesses  were  contrived  in  the  wall, 
as  one  may  find  in  Northumberland  at  the  present  day.  The 
bed  was  commonly,  but  not  for  the  ladies  of  the  house,  merely 
a  big  bag  stuffed  with  straw.  A  sheet  wrapped  round  the  body 
formed  the  only  night-dress.  But  there  were  also  pillows,  blan- 
kets, and  coverlets.  The  early  English  bed  was  quite  as  luxuri- 
ous as  any  that  followed  after,  until  the  invention  of  the  spring 
mattress  gave  a  new  and  hitherto  unhoped-for  joy  to  the  hours 
of  night. 

The  second  step  in  advance  was  the  ladies'  bower,  a  room 
or  suite  of  rooms  set  apart  for  the  ladies  of  the  house  and  their 
women.  For  the  first  time,  as  soon  as  this  room  was  added,  the 
women  could  follow  their  own  vocations  of  embroidery,  spinning, 


1842 


WALTER   BESANT 


and    needlework    of   all    kinds,    apart    from    the    rough  and  noisy 
talk  of  the  men. 

The  main  featiires,  therefore,  of  every  great  house,  whether 
in  town  or  country,  from  the  seventh  to  the  twelfth  century, 
were  the  hall,  the  solar  built  over  the  kitchen  and  buttery,  and 
the  ladies'  bower. 

There  was  also  the  garden.  In  all  times  the  English  have 
been  fond  of  gardens.  Bacon  thought  it  not  beneath  his  dignity 
to  order  the  arrangement  of  a  garden.  Long  before  Bacon,  a 
writer  of  the  twelfth  century  describes  a  garden  as  it  should  be. 
"  It  should  be  adorned  on  this  side  with  roses,  lilies,  and  the 
marigold;  on  that  side  with  parsley,  cost,  fennel,  southernwood, 
coriander,  sage,  savery,  hyssop,  mint,  vine,  dettany,  pellitory, 
lettuce,  cresses,  and  the  peony.  Let  there  be  beds  enriched  with 
onions,  leeks,  garlic,  melons,  and  scallions.'  The  garden  is  also 
enriched  by  the  cucumber,  the  soporiferous  poppy,  and  the  daffo- 
dil, and  the  acanthus.  Nor  let  pot  herbs  be  wanting,  as  beet- 
root, sorrel,  and  mallow.  It  is  useful  also  to  the  gardener  to 
have  anise,  mustard,  and  wormwood.  ...  A  noble  garden 
will  give  you  medlars,  quinces,  the  pear  main,  peaches,  pears  of 
St.  Regie,  pomegranates,  citrons,  oranges,  almonds,  dates,  and 
figs.**  The  latter  fruits  were  perhaps  attempted,  but  one  doubts 
their  arriving  at  ripeness.  Perhaps  the  writer  sets  down  what  he 
hoped  would  be  some  day  achieved. 

The  in-door  amusements  of  the  time  were  very  much  like  our 
own.  We  have  a  little  music  in  the  evening;  so  did  our  fore- 
fathers. We  sometimes  have  a  little  dancing;  so  did  they,  but 
the  dancing  was  done  for  them.  We  go  to  the  theatres  to  see 
the  mime;  in  their  days  the  mime  made  his  theatre  in  the  great 
man's  hall.  He  played  the  fiddle  and  the  harp;  he  sang  songs, 
he  brought  his  daughter,  who  walked  on  her  hands  and  executed 
astonishing  capers;  the  gleeman,  minstrel,  or  jongleur  was  al- 
ready as  disreputable  as  when  we  find  him  later  on  with  his 
ribaudcric.  Again,  we  play  chess;  so  did  our  ancestors.  We 
gamble  with  dice;  so  did  they.  We  feast  and  drink  together; 
so  did  they.  We  pass  the  time  in  talk;  so  did  they.  In  a  word, 
as  Alphonse  Karr  put  it,  the  more  we  change,  the  more  we 
remain  the  same. 

Out-of-doors,  as  Fitz- Stephen  shows,  the  young  men  skated, 
wrestled,  played  ball,  practiced  archery,  held  water  tournaments, 
baited  bull  and  bear,   fought  cocks,  and  rode  races.      They  were 


WALTER   BESANT 


1843 


also  mustered  sometimes  for  service  in  the  field,  and  went  forth 
cheerfully,  being  specially  upheld  by  the  reassuring  consciousness 
that  London  was  always  on  the  winning  side. 

The  growth  of  the  city  government  belongs  to  the  history 
of  London.  Suffice  it  here  to  say  that  the  people  in  all  times 
enjoyed  a  freedom  far  above  that  possessed  by  any  other  city  of 
Europe.  The  history  of  municipal  London  is  a  history  of  con- 
tinual struggle  to  maintain  this  freedom  against  all  attacks,  and 
to  extend  it  and  to  make  it  impregnable.  Already  the  people 
are  proud,  turbulent,  and  confident  in  their  own  strength.  They 
refuse  to  own  any  other  lord  but  the  king  himself;  there  is  no 
Earl  of  London.  They  freely  hold  their  free  and  open  meetings, 
their  folk-motes, — in  the  open  space  otitside  the  northwest  corner 
of  St.  Paul's  Churchyard.  That  they  lived  roughly,  enduring 
cold,  sleeping  in  small  houses  in  narrow  courts;  that  they  suf- 
fered much  from  the  long  darkness  of  winter;  that  they  were 
always  in  danger  of  fevers,  agues,  <<  putrid  ^^  throats,  plagues, 
fires  by  night,  and  civil  wars;  that  they  were  ignorant  of  letters, 
• — three  schools  only  for  the  whole  of  London, — all  this  may 
very  well  be  understood.  But  these  things  do  not  make  men 
and  women  wretched.  They  were  not  always  suffering  from  pre- 
ventable disease;  they  were  not  always  hauling  their  goods  out 
of  the  flames;  they  were  not  always  fighting.  The  first  and 
most  simple  elements  of  human  happiness  are  three;  to  wit,  that 
a  man  should  be  in  bodily  health,  that  he  should  be  free,  that 
he  should  enjoy  the  produce  of  his  own  labor.  All  these  things 
the  Londoner  possessed  under  the  Norman  kings  nearly  as  much 
as  in  these  days  they  can  be  possessed.  His  city  has  always 
been  one  of  the  healthiest  in  the  world;  whatever  freedom 
could  be  attained  he  enjoyed;  and  in  that  rich  trading  town  all 
men  who  worked  lived  in  plenty. 

The  households,  the  way  of  living,  the  occupations  of  the 
women,  can  be  clearly  made  out  in  every  detail  from  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  literature.  The  women  in  the  country  made  the  garments, 
carded  the  wool,  sheared  the  sheep,  washed  the  things,  beat  the 
flax,  ground  the  corn,  sat  at  the  spinning-wheel,  and  prepared 
the  food.  In  the  towns  they  had  no  shearing  to  do,  but  all  the 
rest  of  their  duty  fell  to  their  province.  The  English  women 
excelled  in  embroidery.  ^^  English  ^^  work  meant  the  best  kind  of 
work.  They  worked  church  vestments  with  gold  and  pearls  and 
precious  stones.     "  Orfrey,  '^  or  embroidery  in  gold,  was  a  special 


1844  WALTER   BESANT 

art.  Of  course  they  are  accused  by  the  ecclesiastics  of  an  over- 
weening desire  to  wear  finery;  they  certainly  curled  their  hair, 
and,  one  is  sorry  to  read,  they  painted,  and  thereby  spoiled  their 
pretty  cheeks.  If  the  man  was  the  hlaf-ord  [lord], — the  owner 
or  winner  of  the  loaf, — the  wife  was  the  hlaf-dig-  [lady],  its  dis- 
tributor; the  servants  and  the  retainers  were  hlaf-oetas,  or  eaters 
of  it.  When  nunneries  began  to  be  founded,  the  Saxon  ladies  in 
great  niimbers  forsook  the  world  for  the  cloister.  And  here  they 
began  to  learn  Latin,  and  became  able  at  least  to  carry  on  corre- 
spondence—  specimens  of  which  still  exist  —  in  that  language. 
Every  nunnery  possessed  a  school  for  girls.  They  were  taught 
to  read  and  to  write  their  own  language  and  Latin,  perhaps  also 
rhetoric  and  embroidery.  As  the  pious  Sisters  were  fond  of 
putting  on  violet  chemises,  tunics,  and  vests  of  delicate  tissue, 
embroidered  with  silver  and  gold,  and  scarlet  shoes,  there  was 
probably  not  much  mortification  of  the  flesh  in  the  nunneries  of 
the  later  Saxon  times. 

This  for  the  better  class.  We  cannot  suppose  that  the  daugh- 
ters ■  of  the  craftsmen  became  scholars  of  the  nunnery.  Theirs 
were  the  lower  walks  —  to  spin  the  linen  and  to  make  the  bread 
and  carry  on  the  housework. 


WALTER   BEvSANT 


1845 


THE   SYNAGOGUE 

From  <The  Rebel  Queen  >  :  copyrighted  1893,  by  Harper  and  Brothers 

«D'un  jour  interieur  je  me  sens  eclaire, 
Et  j'entends  une  voix  qui  me  dit  d'esperer.» — Lamartine. 

«    A  RE  you  ready,   Francesca  ?  '* 
f\  Nelly  ran   lightly  down   the   narrow   stairs,   dressed  for 

Sabbath  and  Synagogue.  She  was  dainty  and  pretty  at  all 
times  in  the  matter  of  dress,  but  especially  on  a  summer  day, 
which  affords  opportunity  for  bright  color  and  bright  drapery  and 
an  ethereal  appearance.  This  morning  she  was  full  of  color  and 
light.  When,  however,  she  found  herself  confronted  with  Fran- 
cesca's  simple  gray  dress,  so  closely  fitting,  so  faultless,  and  her 
black-lace  hat  with  its  single  rose  for  color,  Nelly's  artistic  sense 
caused  her  heart  to  sink  like  lead.  It  is  not  for  nothing  that  one 
learns  and  teaches  the  banjo;  one  Art  leads  to  another;  she  who 
knows  music  can  feel  for  dress.  "  Oh !  '^  she  cried,  clasping  her 
hands.     ^*  That's  what  we  can  neyer  do !  ^* 

«What?» 

^*  That  fit !  Look  at  me !  Yet  they  call  me  clever.  Clara  gives 
me  the  new  fashions  and 'I  copy  them,  and  the  girls  in  our  street 
copy  me  —  poor  things!  —  and  the  dressmaker  comes  to  talk  things 
over  and  to  learn  from  me.  I  make  everything  for  myself.  And 
they  call  me  clever!  But  I  can't  get  near  it;  and  if  I  can't 
nobody  can.^^     .     .     . 

A  large  detached  structure  of  red  brick  stood  east  and  west, 
with  a  flat  fagade  and  round  windows  that  bore  out  the  truth  of 
the  date — 1700  —  carved  upon  the  front.  A  word  or  two  in  that 
square  character  —  that  tongue  which  presents  so  few  attractions 
to  most  of  us  compared  with  other  tongues  —  probably  corrobo- 
rated the  internal  evidence  of  the  fagade  and  the  windows. 

"This  is  the  synagogue, ^^  said  Nelly.  She  entered,  and  turn- 
ing to  the  right,  led  the  way  up-stairs  to  a  gallery  running  along 
the  whole  side  of  the  building.  On  the  other  side  was  another 
gallery.  In  front  of  both  was  a  tolerably  wide  grill,  through 
which  the  congregation  below  could  be  seen  perfectly. 

"This  is  the  women's  gallery, '^  whispered  Nell  —  there  were 
not  many  women  present.  "We'll  sit  in  the  front.  Presently 
they    will    sing.      They    sing    beautifully.      Now    they're    reading 


1846 


WALTER   BEvSANT 


prayers  and  the  Law.  They've  got  to  read  the  whole  Law 
through  once  a  week,  you  know."  Francesca  looked  curiously 
through  the  grill.  When  one  is  in  a  perfectly  strange  place,  the 
first  observations  made  are  of  small  and  unimportant  things.  She 
observed  that  there  was  a  circular  inclosure  at  the  east  end,  as  if 
for  an  altar;  but  there  was  no  altar:  two  doors  indicated  a  cup- 
board in  the  wall.  There  were  six  tall  wax-lights  burning  round 
the  inclosure,  although  the  morning  was  fine  and  bright.  At  the 
west  end  a  high  screen  kept  the  congregation  from  the  disturb- 
ance of  those  who  entered  or  went  out.  Within  the  screen  was 
a  company  of  men  and  boys,  all  with  their  hats  and  caps  on  their 
heads;  they  looked  like  the  choir.  In  front  of  the  choir  was  a 
platform  railed  round.  Three  chairs  were  placed  at  the  back  of 
the  platform.  There  was  a  table  covered  with  red  velvet,  on 
which  lay  the  book  of  the  Law,  a  ponderous  roll  of  parchment 
provided  with  silver  staves  or  handles.  Before  this  desk  or  table 
stood  the  Reader.  He  was  a  tall  and  handsome  man,  with  black 
hair  and  full  black  beard,  about  forty  years  of  age.  He  wore  a 
gown  and  large  Geneva  bands,  like  a  Presbyterian  minister;  on 
his  head  he  had  a  kind  of  biretta.  Four  tall  wax  candles  were 
placed  round  the  front  of  the  platform.  The  chairs  were  occu- 
pied by  two  or  three  elders.  A  younger  man  stood  at  the  desk 
beside  the  Reader.  The  service  was  already  begim  —  it  was,  in 
fact,  half  over. 

Francesca  observed  next  that  all  the  men  wore  a  kind  of 
broad  scarf,  made  of  some  white  stuff  about  eight  feet  long  and 
four  feet  broad.  Bands  of  black  or  blue  were  worked  in  the 
ends,  which  were  also  provided  with  fringes.  ^*  It  is  the  Talleth," 
Nelly  whispered.  Even  the  boys  wore  this  white  robe,  the  effect 
of  which  would  have  been  very  good  but  for  the  modern  hat,  tall 
or  pot,  which  spoiled  all.  Such  a  robe  wants  a  turban  above  it, 
not  an  English  hat.  The  seats  were  ranged  along  the  synagogue 
east  and  west.  The  place  was  not  full,  but  there  were  a  good 
many  worshipers.  The  service  was  chanted  by  the  Reader.  It 
was  a  kind  of  chant  quite  new  and  strange  to  Francesca.  Like 
many  young  persons  brought  up  with  no  other  religion  than 
they  can  pick  up  for  themselves,  she  was  curious  and  somewhat 
learned  in  the  matter  of  ecclesiastical  music  and  ritual,  which  she 
approached,  owing  to  her  education,  with  unbiased  mind.  She 
knew  masses  and  anthems  and  hymns  and  chants  of  all  kinds; 
never  had   she   heard   anything   of   this   kind  before.     It  was  not 


WALTER   BESANT 


1847 


congregational,  or  Gregorian;  nor  was  it  repeated  by  the  choir 
from  side  to  side;  nor  was  it  a  monotone  with  a  drop  at  the 
end;  nor  was  it  a  florid,  tuneful  chant  such  as  one  may  hear  in 
some  Anglican  services.  This  Reader,  with  a  rich,  strong  voice, 
a  baritone  of  great  power,  took  nearly  the  whole  of  the  service  — 
it  must  have  been  extremely  fatiguing  —  upon  himself,  chanting 
it  from  beginning  to  end.  No  doubt,  as  he  rendered  the  read- 
ing and  the  prayers,  so  they  had  been  given  by  his  ancestors  in  , 
Spain  and  Portugal  generation  after  generation,  back  into  the 
times  when  they  came  over  in  Phoenician  ships  to  the  Cartha- 
ginian colonies,  even  before  the  dispersion  of  the  Ten  Tribes. 
It  was  a  traditional  chant  of  antiquity  beyond  record  —  not  a 
monotonous  chant.  Francesca  knew  nothing  of  the  words;  she 
grew  tired  of  trying  to  make  out  whereabouts  on  the  page  the 
Reader  might  be  in  the  book  lent  her,  which  had  Hebrew  on 
one  side  and  English  on  the  other.  Besides,  the  man  attracted 
her  —  by  his  voice,  by  his  energy,  by  his  appearance.  She  closed 
her  book  and  surrendered  herself  to  the  influence  of  the  voice 
and  the  emotions  which  it  expressed. 

There  was  no  music  to  help  him.  From  time  to  time  the 
men  in  the  congregation  lifted  up  their  voices  —  not  seemingly 
in  response,  but  as  if  moved  to  sudden  passion  and  crying  out 
with  one  accord.  This  helped  him  a  little,  otherwise  he  was 
without   any  assistance. 

A  great  Voice.  The  man  sometimes  leaned  over  the  Roll  of 
the  Law,  sometimes  he  stood  upright,  always  his  great  Voice 
went  up  and  down  and  rolled  along  the  roof  and  echoed  along 
the  benches  of  the  women's  gallery.  Now  the  Voice  sounded  a 
note  of  rejoicing;  now,  but  less  often,  a  note  of  sadness;  now 
it  was  a  sharp  and  sudden  cry  of  triumph.  Then  the  people 
shouted  with  him  —  it  was  as  if  they  clashed  sword  on  shield 
and  yelled  for  victory;  now  it  was  a  note  of  defiance,  as  when 
men  go  forth  to  fight  an  enemy;  now  it  sank  to  a  murmur,  as 
of  one  who  consoles  and  soothes  and  promises  things  to  come; 
now  it  was  a  note  of  rapture,  as  if  the  Promised  Land  was 
already  recovered. 

Was  all  that  in  the  Voice  ?  Did  the  congregation,  all  sitting 
wrapped  in  their  white  robes,  feel  these  emotions  as  the  Voice 
thundered  and  rolled  ?  I  know  not.  Such  was  the  effect  pro- 
duced upon  one  who  heard  this  Voice  for  the  first  time.  At  first 
it  seemed  loud,  even  barbaric;  there  was  lacking  something  which 


1848 


WALTER   BESANT 


the  listener  and  stranger  had  learned  to  associate  with  worship. 
What  was  it  ?  Reverence  ?  But  she  presently  found  reverence 
In  plenty,  only  of  a  kind  that  differed  from  that  of  Christian 
worship.  Then  the  listener  made  another  discovery.  In  this 
ancient  service  she  missed  the  note  of  humiliation.  There  was 
no  Litany  at  a  Faldstool.  There  was  no  kneeling  in  abasement; 
there  was  no  appearance  of  penitence,  sorrow,  or  the  confession 
of  sins.  The  Voice  was  as  the  Voice  of  a  Captain  exhorting  his 
soldiers  to  fight.  The  service  was  warlike,  the  service  of  a  peo- 
ple whose  trust  in  their  God  is  so  great  that  they  do  not  need 
to  call  perpetually  upon  Him  for  the  help  and  forgiveness  of 
which  they  are  assured.  Yes,  yes — she  thought  —  this  is  the 
service  of  a  race  of  warriors;  they  are  fighting  men:  the  Lord  is 
their  God;  He  is  leading  them  to  battle:  as  for  little  sins,  and 
backslidings,  and  penitences,  they  belong  to  the  Day  of  Atone- 
ment—  which  comes  once  a  year.  For  all  the  other  days  in  the 
year,  battle  and  victory  occupy  all  the  mind.  The  service  of  a 
great  fighting  people;  a  service  full  of  joy,  full  of  faith,  full  of 
assurance,  full  of  hope  and  confidence  —  such  assurance  as  few 
Christians  can  understand,  and  of  faith  to  which  few  Christians 
can  attain.  Perhaps  Francesca  was  wrong;  but  these  were  her 
first  impressions,  and  these  are  mostly  true. 

In  the  body  of  the  synagogue  men  came  late.  Under  one 
gallery  was  a  school  of  boys,  in  the  charge  of  a  graybeard,  who, 
book  in  hand,  followed  the  service  with  one  eye,  while  he 
admonished  perpetually  the  boys  to  keep  still  and  to  listen.  The 
boys  grew  restless;  it  was  tedious  to  them  —  the  Voice  which 
expressed  so  much  to  the  stranger  who  knew  no  Hebrew  at  all 
was  tedious  to  the  children;  they  were  allowed  to  get  up  and 
run  into  the  court  outside  and  then  to  come  back  again;  nobody 
heeded  their  going  in  and  out.  One  little  boy  of  three,  wrapped, 
like  the  rest,  in  a  white  Tallcth,  ran  up  and  down  the  side  aisle 
without  being  heeded  —  even  by  the  splendid  Beadle  with  the 
gold-laced  hat,  which  looked  so  truly  wonderful  above  the  Ori- 
ental Talleth.  The  boys  in  the  choir  got  up  and  went  in  and 
out  just  as  they  pleased.  Nobody  minded.  The  congregation, 
mostly  well-to-do  men  with  silk  hats,  sat  in  their  places,  book  in 
hand,  and  paid  no  attention. 

Under  the  opposite  gallery  sat  two  or  three  rows  of  worship- 
ers, who  reminded  Francesca  of  Browning's  poem  of  St.  John's 
Day  at   Rome.     For   they   nudged    and   jostled   each   other;    they 


WALTER  BESANT  1 849 

whispered  things;  they  even  laughed  over  the  things  they  whis- 
pered. But  they  were  clad  like  those  in  the  open  part  in  the 
Talleth,  and  they  sat  book  in  hand,  and  from  time  to  time  they 
raised  their  voices  with  the  congregation.  They  showed  no  rev- 
erence except  that  they  did  not  talk  or  laugh  loudly.  They  were 
like  the  children,  their  neighbors, — just  as  restless,  just  as  unin- 
terested, just  as  perfunctory.  Well,  they  were  clearly  the  poorer 
and  the  more  ignorant  part  of  the  community.  They  came  here 
and  sat  through  the  service  because  they  were  ordered  so  to  do; 
because,  like  Passover,  and  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles,  and  the 
Fast  of  Atonement,  it  was  the  Law  of  their  People. 

The  women  in  the  gallery  sat  or  stood.  They  neither  knelt 
nor  sang  aloud;  they  only  sat  when  it  was  proper  to  sit,  or  stood 
when  it  was  proper  to  stand.  They  were  like  the  women,  the 
village  women,  in  a  Spanish  or  Italian  church,  for  whom  every- 
thing is  done.  Francesca,  for  the  moment,  felt  humiliated  that 
she  should  be  compelled  to  sit  apart  from  the  congregation,  railed 
off  in  the  women's  gallery,  to  have  her  religion  done  for  her, 
without  a  voice  of  her  own  in  it  at  all.  So,  I  have  heard,  indig- 
nation sometimes  fills  the  bosom  of  certain  ladies  when  they 
reflect  upon  the  fact  that  they  are  excluded  from  the  choir,  and 
forbidden  even  to  play  the  organ  in  their  own  parish  church. 

The  chanting  ceased;  the  Reader  sat  down.  Then  the  Choir 
began.  They  sang  a  hymn  —  a  Hebrew  hymn  —  the  rhythm  and 
metre  were  not  English;  the  music  was  like  nothing  that  can  be 
heard  in  a  Christian  Church.  **  It  is  the  music, '^  said  Nelly,  ^Ho 
which  the  Israelites  crossed  the  Red  Sea:'*  a  bold  statement, 
"but  —  why  not  ?  If  the  music  is  not  of  Western  origin  and  char- 
acter, who  can  disprove  such  an  assertion  ?  After  the  hymn  the 
prayers  and  reading  went  on  again. 

There  came  at  last  —  it  is  a  long  service,  such  as  we  poor 
weak-kneed  Anglicans  could  not  endure  —  the  end.  There  was  a 
great  bustle  and  ceremony  on  the  platform;  they  rolled  up  the 
Roll  of  the  Law;  they  wrapped  it  in  a  purple  velvet  cloth;  they 
hung  over  it  a  silver  breastplate  set  with  twelve  jewels  for  the 
Twelve  Tribes  —  in  memory  of  the  Urim  and  Thummim.  Fran- 
cesca saw  that  the  upper  ends  of  the  staves  were  adorned  with 
silver  pomegranates  and  with  silver  bells,  and  they  placed  it  in 
the  arms  of  one  of  those  who  had  been  reading  the  law;  then  a 
procession  was  formed,  and  they  walked,  while  the  Choir  sang 
one  of  the  Psalms  of  David  —  but  not  in  the  least  like  the  same 


1850 


WALTER   BESANT 


Psalm  sung  in  an  English  Cathedral — bearing  the  Roll  of  the 
Law  to  the  Ark,  that  is  to  say,  to  the  cupboard,  behind  the  rail- 
ing and  inclosure  at  the  east  end. 

The  Reader  came  back.  Then  with  another  chanted  Prayer  — 
it  sotmded  like  a  prolonged  shout  of  continued  Triumph  —  he 
ended  his  part  of  the  service. 

And  then  the  choir  sang  the  last  hymn  —  a  lovely  hymn,  not 
in  the  least  like  a  Christian,  or  at  least  an  English  hymn  —  a 
psalm  that  breathed  a  tranquil  hope  and  a  perfect  faith.  One 
needed  no  words  to  understand  the  full  meaning  and  beauty  and 
depth  of  that  hymn. 

The  service  was  finished.  The  men  took  off  their  white  scarfs 
and  folded  them  up.  They  stood  and  talked  in  groups  for  a  few 
minutes,  gradually  melting  away.  As  for  the  men  under  the 
gallery,  who  had  been  whispering  and  laughing,  they  trooped 
out  of  the  synagogue  all  together.  Evidently,  to  them  the  serv- 
ice was  only  a  form.  What  is  it,  in  any  religion,  but  a  form, 
to  the  baser  sort  ? 

The  Beadle  put  out  the  lights.  Nelly  led  the  way  down  the 
stairs.  Thinking  of  what  the  service  had  suggested  to  herself  — 
all  those  wonderful  things  above  enumerated  —  Francesca  won- 
dered what  it  meant  to  a  girl  who  heard  it  every  Sabbath  morn- 
ing. But  she  refrained  from  asking.  Custom  too  often  takes 
the  symbolism  out  of  the  symbols  and  the  poetry  out  of  the 
verse.  Then  the  people  begin  to  worship  the  symbols  and  make 
a  fetich  of  the  words.  We  have  seen  this  elsewhere  —  in  other 
forms  of  faith.  Outside  they  found  Emanuel.  They  had  not 
seen  him  in  the  congregation,  probably  because  it  is  difficult  to 
recognize  a  man  merely  by  the  top  of  his  hat. 

**Come,^*  he  said,  ^Het  us  look  around  the  place.  Afterwards, 
perhaps,  we  will  talk  of  our  Service.  This  synagogue  is  built  on 
the  site  of  the  one  erected  by  Manasseh  and  his  friends  when 
Oliver  Cromwell  permitted  them  to  return  to  London  after  four 
hundred  years  of  exile.  They  were  forced  to  wear  yellow  hats 
at  first,  but  that  ordinance  soon  fell  into  disuse,  like  many  other 
abominable  laws.  When  you  read  about  mediaeval  laws,  Fran- 
cesca, remember  that  when  they  were  cruel  or  stupid  they  were 
seldom  carried  into  effect,  because  the  arm  of  the  executive  was 
weak.  Who  was  there  to  oblige  the  Jews  to  wear  the  yellow  hat  ? 
The  police  ?  There  were  no  police.  The  people  ?  What  did  the 
people  care  about  the  yellow  hat  ?      When  the  Fire  burned  down 


WALTER   BESANT 


1851 


London,  sparing  not  even  the  great  Cathedral,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  Synagogue,  this  second  Temple  arose,  equal  in  splendor  to 
the  first.  At  that  time  all  the  Jews  in  London  were  Sephardim 
of  Spain  and  Portugal  and  Italy.  Even  now  there  are  many  of 
the  people  here  who  speak  nothing  among  themselves  but  Span- 
ish, just  as  there  are  Askenazim  who  speak  nothing  among  them- 
selves but  Yiddish.  Come  with  me;  I  will  show  you  something 
that  will  please  you.'^ 

He  led  the  way  into  another  flagged  court,  larger  than  the 
first.  There  were  stone  staircases,  mysterious  doorways,  paved 
passages,  a  suggestion  of  a  cloister,  an  open  space  or  square, 
and  buildings  on  all  sides  with  windows  opening  upon  the  court. 

**  It  doesn't  look  English  at  all,*^  said  Francesca.  "I  have 
seen  something  like  it  in  a  Spanish  convent.  With  balconies  and 
a  few  bright  hangings  and  a  black-haired  woman  at  the  open 
windows,  and  perhaps  a  coat  of  arms  carved  upon  the  wall,  it 
would  do  for  part  of  a  Spanish  street.  It  is  a  strange  place  to 
find  in  the  heart  of  London.  ^^ 

"You  see  the  memory  of  the  Peninsula.  What  were  we  say- 
ing yesterday  ?  Spain  places  her  own  seal  upon  everything  that 
belongs  to  her  —  people,  buildings,  all.  What  you  see  here  is  the 
central  Institute  of  our  People,  the  Sephardim  —  the  Spanish  part 
of  our  People.  Here  is  our  synagogue,  here  are  schools,  alms- 
houses, residence  of  the  Rabbi,  and  all  sorts  of  things.  You  can 
come  here  sometimes  and  think  of  Spain,  where  your  ancestors 
lived.  Many  generations  in  Spain  have  made  you  —  as  they  have 
made  me  —  a  Spaniard.-*' 

They  went  back  to  the  first  court.  On  their  way  out,  as  they 
passed  the  synagogue,  there  came  running  across  the  court  a  girl 
of  fifteen  or  so.  She  was  bareheaded;  a  mass  of  thick  black  hair 
was  curled  round  her  shapely  head;  her  figure  was  that  of  an 
English  girl  of  twenty;  her  eyes  showed  black  and  large  and 
bright  as  she  glanced  at  the  group  standing  in  the  court;  her 
skin  was  dark;  she  was  oddly  and  picturesquely  dressed  in  a 
grayish-blue  skirt,  with  a  bright  crimson  open  jacket.  The  color 
seemed  literally  to  strike  the  eye.  The  girl  disappeared  under  a 
doorway,  leaving  a  picture  of  herself  in  Francesca's  mind  —  a 
picture  to  be  remembered. 

"A  Spanish  Jewess, '^  said  Emanuel.  "An  Oriental.  She 
chooses  by  instinct  the  colors  that  her  great-grandmother  might 
have  worn  to  grace  the  triumph  of  David  the  King." 


1852 

BESTIARIES   AND   LAPIDARIES 

BY   L.    OSCAR   KUHNS 

iXE  of  the  marked  features  of  literary  investigation  during 
the  present  century  is  the  interest  which  it  has  manifested 
in  the  Middle  Ages.  Not  only  have  specialists  devoted 
themselves  to  the  detailed  study  of  the  Sagas  of  the  North  and  the 
great  cycles  of  Romance  in  France  and  England,  but  the  stories  of 
the  Edda,  of  the  Nibclungen,  and  of  Charlemagne  and  King  Arthur 
have  become  popularized,  so  that  to-day  they  are  familiar  to  the 
general  reader.  There  is  one  class  of  literature,  however,  which  was 
widespread  and  popular  during  the  Middle  Ages,  but  which  is  to-day 
known  only  to  the  student,  —  that  is,  the  so-called  Bestiaries  and 
Lapidaries,  or  collections  of  stories  and  superstitions  concerning  the 
marvelous  attributes  of  animals  and  of  precious  stones. 

The  basis  of  all  Bestiaries  is  the  Greek  Physiologus,  the  origin  of 
which  can  be  traced  back  to  the  second  century  before  Christ.  It 
was  undoubtedly  largely  influenced  by  the  zoology  of  the  Bible ;  and 
in  the  references  to  the  Ibex,  the  Phoenix,  and  the  tree  Paradixion, 
traces  of  Oriental  and  old  Greek  superstitions  can  be  seen.  It  was 
from  the  Latin  versions  of  the  Greek  original  that  translations  were 
made  into  nearly  all  European  languages.  There  are  extant  to-day, 
whole  or  in  fragments,  Bestiaries  in  German,  Old  English,  Old 
French,  Provencal,  Icelandic,  Italian,  Bohemian,  and  even  Armenian, 
Ethiopic,  and  Syriac.  These  various  versions  differ  more  or  less  in 
the  arrangement  and  number  of  the  animals  described,  but  all  point 
back  to  the  same  ultimate  source. 

The  main  object  of  the  Bestiaries  was  not  so  much  to  impart 
scientific  knowledge,  as  by  means  of  symbols  and  allegories  to  teach 
the  doctrines  and  mysteries  of  the  Church.  At  first  this  symbolical 
application  was  short  and  concise,  but  later  became  more  and  more 
expanded,  until  it  often  occupied  more  space  than  the  description  of 
the  animal  which  served  as  a  text. 

Some  of  these  animals  are  entirely  fabulous,  such  as  the  siren, 
the  phoenix,  the  unicorn;  others  are  well  known,  but  possess  certain 
fabulous  attributes.  The  descriptions  of  them  are  not  the  result  of 
personal  observation,  but  are  derived  from  stories  told  by  travelers 
or  read  in  books,  or  are  merely  due  to  the  imagination  of  the  author; 
these  stories,  passing  down  from  hand  to  hand,  gradually  became 
accepted  facts. 

These  books  were  enormously  popular  during  the  Middle  Ages,  a 
fact  which  is  proved  by  the  large  number  of  manuscripts  still  extant. 


BESTIARIES   AND   LAPIDARIES 


1853 


Their  influence  on  literature  was  likewise  very  great.  To  say  noth- 
ing of  the  encyclopaedic  works, —  such  as  <Li  Tresors^  of  Brunetto 
Latini,  the  ^  Image  du  Monde,  ^  the  <  Roman  de  la  Rose,^ — which  con- 
tain extracts  from  the  Bestiaries, — there  are  many  references  to  them 
in  the  great'  writers,  even  down  to  the  present  day.  There  are 
certain  passages  in  Dante,  Chaucer,  and  Shakespeare,  that  would  be 
unintelligible  without  some  knowledge  of  these  mediaeval  books  of 
zoology. 

Hence,  besides  the  interest  inherent  in  these  quaint  and  childish 
stories,  besides  their  value  in  revealing  the  scientific  spirit  and 
attainments  of  the  times,  some  knowledge  of  the  Bestiaries  is  of 
undoubted  value  and  interest  to  the  student  of  literature. 

Closely  allied  to  the  Bestiaries  (and  indeed  often  contained  in  the 
same  manuscript)  are  the  Lapidaries,  in  which  are  discussed  the 
various  kinds  of  precious  stones,  with  their  physical  characteristics, — ■ 
shape,  size,  color,  their  use  in  medicine,  and  their  marvelous  talis- 
manic  properties.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  they  contain  the  most 
absurd  fables  and  superstitions,  they  were  actually  used  as  text- 
books in  the  schools,  and  published  in  medical  treatises.  The  most 
famous  of  them  was  written  in  Latin  by  Marbode,  Bishop  of  Rennes 
(died  in  11 23),  and  translated  many  times  into  Old  French  and  other 
languages. 

The  following  extracts  from  the  Bestiaries  are  translated  from  <  Le 
Bestiaire*  of  Guillaume  Le  Clerc,  composed  in  the  year  12 10  (edited 
by  Dr.  Robert  Reinsch,  Leipzig,  1890).  While  endeavoring  to  retain 
somewhat  of  the  quaintness  and  naivete  of  the  original,  I  have 
omitted  those  repetitions  and  tautological  expressions  which  are  so 
characteristic  of  mediaeval  literature.  The  religious  application  of  the 
various  animals  is  usually  very  long,  and  often  is  the  mere  repetition 
of  the  same  idea.  The  symbolical  meaning  of  the  lion  here  given 
may  be  taken  as  a  type  of  all  the  rest. 


i<^  C,(lnJLo'^X^. 


1854 


BESTIARIES   AND   LAPIDARIES 


THE   LION 


IT  IS  proper  that  we  should  first  speak  of  the  nature  of  the  Hon, 
which  is  a  fierce  and  proud  beast  and  very  bold.  *  It  has  three 
especially  peculiar  characteristics.  In  the  first  place  it  always 
dwells  upon  a  high  mountain.  From  afar  off  it  can  scent  the 
hunter  who  is  pursuing  it.  And  in  order  that  the  latter  may  not 
follow  it  to  its  lair  it  covers  over  its  tracks  by  means  of  its  tail. 
Another  wonderful  peculiarity  of  the  lion  is  that  when  it  sleeps 
its  eyes  are  wide  open,  and  clear  and  bright.  The  third  charac- 
teristic is  likewise  very  strange.  For  when  the  lioness  brings 
forth  her  young,  it  falls  to  the  ground,  and  gives  no  sign  of  life 
until  the  third  day,  when  the  lion  breathes  upon  it  and  in  this 
way  brings  it  back  to  life  again. 

The  meaning  of  all  this  is  very  clear.  When  God,  our  Sov- 
ereign father,  who  is  the  vSpiritual  lion,  came  for  our  salvation 
here  upon  earth,  so  skillfully  did  he  cover  his  tracks  that  never 
did  the  himter  know  that  this  was  our  Savior,  and  nature  mar- 
veled how  he  came  among  us.  By  the  hunter  you  must  under- 
stand him  who  made  man  to  go  astray  and  seeks  after  him  to 
devour  him.     This  is  the  Devil,  who  desires  only  evil. 

When  this  lion  was  laid  upon  the  Cross  by  the  Jews,  his  ene- 
mies, who  judged  him  wrongfully,  his  human  nature  suffered 
death.  When  he  gave  up  the  spirit  from  his  body,  he  fell  asleep 
upon  the  holy  cross.  Then  his  divine  nature  awoke.  This  must 
you  believe  if  you  wish  to  live  again. 

When  God  was  placed  m  the  tomb,  he  was  there  only  three 
days,  and  on  the  third  day  the  Father  breathed  upon  him  and 
brought  him  to  life  again,  just  as  the  lion  did  to  its  young. 

THE    PELICAN 

THE  pelican  is   a   wonderful   bird   which   dwells   in   the   region 
about   the   river   Nile.      The   written   history*  tells  us  that 
there    are   two  kinds, —  those   which  dwell   in   the  river  and 
-eat  nothing  but  fish,   and  those  which  dwell  in  the  desert  and  eat 
only  insects  and  worms.      There   is   a  wonderful  thing  about  the 
pelican,  for  never  did  mother-sheep  love  her  lamb  as  the  pelican 

*The  reference  here  is  probably  to  the  < Liber  de  Bestiis  et  Aliis  Rebus* 
of  Hugo  de  St.  Victor. 


BESTIARIES   AND   LAPIDARIES 


1855 


loves  its  young.  When  the  young  are  born,  the  parent  bird 
devotes  all  his  care  and  thought  to  nourishing  them.  But  the 
young  birds  are  ungrateful,  and  when  they  have  grown  strong 
and  self-reliant  they  peck  at  their  father's  face,  and  he,  enraged 
at  their  wickedness,  kills  them  all. 

On  the  third  day  the  father  comes  to  them,  deeply  moved 
with  pity  and  sorrow.  With  his  beak  he  pierces  his  own  side, 
until  the  blood  flows  forth.  With  the  blood  he  brings  back  life 
into  the  body  of  his  young.  * 


THE   EAGLE 

THE  eagle  is  the  king  of  birds.  When  it  is  old  it  becomes 
young  again  in  a  very  strange  manner.  When  its  eyes  are 
darkened  and  its  wings  are  heavy  with  age,  it  seeks  out  a 
fountain  clear  and  pure,  where  the  water  bubbles  up  and  shines 
in  the  clear  sunlight.  Above  this  fountain  it  rises  high  up  into 
the  air,  and  fixes  its  eyes  upon  the  light  of  the  sun  and  gazes 
upon  it  until  the  heat  thereof  sets  on  fire  its  eyes  and  wings. 
Then  it  descends  down  into  the  fountain  where  the  water  is 
clearest  and  brightest,  and  plunges  and  bathes  three  times,  until 
it  is  fresh  and  renewed  and  healed  of  its  old  age.  f 

The  eagle  has  such  keen  vision,  that  if  it  is  high  up  among 
the  clouds,  soaring  through  the  air,  it  sees  the  fish  swimming 
beneath  it,  in  river  or  sea;  then  down  it  shoots  upon  the  fish 
and  seizes  and  drags  it  to  the  shore.  Again,  if  unknown  to  the 
eagle  its  eggs  should  be  changed  and  others  put  into  its  nest, — 
when  the  young  are  grown,  before  they  fly  away,  it  carries  them 
up  into  the  air  when  the  sun  is  shining  its  brightest.  Those 
which  can  look  at  the  rays  of  the  sun,  without  blinking,  it  loves 
and  holds  dear;  those  which  cannot  stand  to  look  at  the  light,  it 
abandons,  as  base-bom,  nor  troubles  itself  henceforth  concerning 
them.  I 

*  There  are  many  allusions  in  literature  to  this  story.  Cf.  Shakespeare, — 
<<Like  the  kind  life-rendering  pelican, 
Repast  them  with  my  blood.^> — ^Hamlet,'  iv.   5. 
« Those  pelican  daughters. » —  Lear,  iii.  4.     Cf.  also  the  beautiful  metaphor 
of  Alfred  de  Musset,  in  his  <Nuit  de  Mai.> 

f«  Bated  like  eagles  having  lately  bathed. » — <i  Henry  IV., >  iv.   i. 
}:<<Nay,  if  thou  be  that  princely  eagle's  bird, 

Show  thy  descent  by  gazing  'gainst  the  sun.  » —  's  Henry  VL,>  ii.  i.       ' 


1856 


BESTIARIES  AND   LAPIDARIES 


THE   PHCENIX 


THERE  is  a  bird  named  the  phoenix,  which  dwells  in  India  and 
is  never  found  elsewhere.  This  bird  is  always  alone  and 
without  companion,  for  its  like  cannot  be  found,  and  there 
is  no  other  bird  which  resembles  it  in  habits  or  appearance.* 
At  the  end  of  five  hundred  years  it  feels  that  it  has  grown  old, 
and  loads  itself  with  many  rare  and  precious  spices,  and  flies 
from  the  desert  away  to  the  city  of  Leopolis.  There,  by  some 
sign  or  other,  the  coming  of  the  bird  is  announced  to  a  priest  of 
that  city,  who  causes  fagots  to  be  gathered  and  placed  upon  a 
beautiful  altar,  erected  for  the  bird.  And  so,  as  I  have  said,  the 
bird,  laden  with  spices,  comes  to  the  altar,  and  vSmiting  upon  the 
hard  stone  with  its  beak,  it  causes  the  flame  to  leap  forth  and 
set  fire  to  the  wood  and  the  spices.  When  the  fire  is  burning 
brightly,  the  phoenix  lays  itself  upon  the  altar  and  is  burned  to 
dust  and  ashes. 

Then  comes  the  priest  and  finds  the  ashes  piled  up,  and  sep- 
arating them  softly  he  finds  within  a  little  worm,  which  gives 
forth  an  odor  sweeter  than  that  of  roses  or  of  any  other  flower. 
The  next  day  and  the  next  the  priest  comes  again,  and  on  the 
third  day  he  finds  that  the  worm  has  become  a  full-grown  and 
full-fledged  bird,  which  bows  low  before  him  and  flies  away, 
glad  and  joyous,  nor  returns  again  before  five  hundred  years. f 


THE  ANT 

THERE  IS  another  kind  of  ant  up  in  Ethiopia,  which  is  of  the 
shape  and  size  of  dogs.  They  have  strange  habits,  for  they 
scratch  into  the  ground  and  extract  therefrom  great  quan- 
tities of  fine  gold.  If  any  one  wishes  to  take  this  gold  from 
them,  he  soon  repents  of  his  undertaking;  for  the  ants  run  upon 
him,  and  if  they  catch  him  they  devour  him  instantly.  The  peo- 
ple who  live  near  them  know  that  they  are  fierce  and  savage, 
and  that  they  possess  a  great  quantity  of  gold,  and  so  they 
have   invented   a    cunning   trick.       They   take    mares  which   have 

««Were  man  as  rare  as  phcenix.»  —  <As  You  Like  It,>  iv.  3. 

f«But  as  when 
The  Bird  of  Wonder  dies,  the  maiden  phoenix, 
Her  ashes  new  create  another  heir.» — <Henry  VIII. ,>  v.  s,. 


BESTIARIES  AND   LAPIDARIES  1857 

tinweaned  foals,  and  give  them  no  food  for  three  days.  On  the 
fourth  the  mares  are  saddled,  and  to  the  saddles  are  fastened 
boxes  that  shine  like  gold.  Between  these  people  and  the  ants 
flows  a  very  swift  river.  The  famished  mares  are  driven  across 
this  river,  while  the  foals  are  kept  on  the  hither  side.  On  the 
other  side  of  the  river  the  grass  is  rich  and  thick.  Here  the 
mares  graze,  and  the  ants  seeing  the  shining  boxes  think  they 
have  found  a  good  place  to  hide  their  gold,  and  so  all  day  long 
they  fill  and  load  the  boxes  with  their  precious  gold,  till  night 
comes  on  and  the  mares  have  eaten  their  fill.  When  they  hear 
the  neighing  of  their  foals  they  hasten  to  return  to  the  other 
side  of  the  river.  There  their  masters  take  the  gold  from  the 
boxes  and  become  rich  and  powerful,  but  the  ants  grieve  over 
their  loss. 


THE   SIREN 

THE  siren  is  a  monster  of  strange  fashion,  for  from  the  waist 
up  it  is  the  most  beautiful  thing  in  the  world,  formed  in 
the  shape  of  a  woman.  The  rest  of  the  body  is  like  a  fish 
or  a  bird.  So  sweetly  and  beautifully  does  she  sing  that  they 
who  go  sailing  over  the  sea,  as  soon  as  they  hear  the  song,  can- 
not keep  from  going  towards  her.  Entranced  by  the  music,  they 
fall  asleep  in  their  boat,  and  are  killed  by  the  siren  before  they 
can  utter  a  cry.* 


THE   WHALE 

IN  THE  sea,  which  is  mighty  and  vast,  are  many  kinds  of  fish, 
such  as  the  turbot,  the  sturgeon,  and  the  porpoise.  But 
there  is  one  monster,  very  treacherous  and  dangerous.  In 
Latin  its  name  is  Cetus.  It  is  a  bad  neighbor  for  sailors.  The 
upper  part  of  its  back  looks  like  sand,  and  when  it  rises  from 
the  sea,  the  mariners  think  it  is  an  island.  Deceived  by  its 
size  they  sail  toward  it  for  refuge,  when  the  storm  comes  upon 
them.  They  cast  anchor,  disembark  upon  the  back  of  the  whale, 
cook  their  food,  build  a  fire,  and  in  order  to  fasten  their  boat 
they   drive    great    stakes   into    what   seems    to    them    to   be   sand. 

*  References  to  the   siren   are   innumerable ;  the   most   famous   perhaps   is 
Heine's  <  Lorelei. >     Cf.  also  Dante,  <  Purgatorio,>  xix.  19-20. 


1858 


BESTIARIES  AND   LAPIDARIES 


When  the  monster  feels  the  heat  of  the  fire  which  bums  upon 
Its  back,  it  phmges  down  into  the  depths  of  the  sea,  and  drags 
the  ship  and  all  the  people  after  it. 

When  the  fish  is  hungry  it  opens  its  mouth  very  wide,  and 
breathes  forth  an  exceedingly  sweet  odor.  Then  all  the  little 
fish  stream  thither,  and,  allured  by  the  sweet  smell,  crowd  into 
its  throat.  Then  the  whale  closes  its  jaws  and  swallows  them 
into  its  stomach,  which  is  as  wide  as  a  valley.* 


THE   CROCODILE 

THE  crocodile  is  a  fierce  beast  that  lives  always  beside  the 
river  Nile.  In  shape  it  is  somewhat  like  an  ox;  it  is  full 
twenty  ells  long,  and  as  big  around  as  the  trunk  of  a  tree. 
It  has  four  feet,  large  claws,  and  very  sharp  teeth;  by  means  of 
these  it  is  well  armed.  So  hard  and  tough  is  its  skin,  that  it 
minds  not  in  the  least  hard  blows  made  by  sharp  stones.  Never 
was  seen  another  such  a  beast,  for  it  lives  on  land  and  in  water. 
At  night  it  is  submerged  in  water,  and  during  the  day  it  reposes 
upon  the  land.  If  it  meets  and  overcomes  a  man,  it  swallows 
him  entire,  so  that  nothing  remains.  But  ever  after  it  laments 
him  as  long  as  it  lives. f  The  upper  jaw  of  this  beast  is  immova- 
ble when  it  eats,  and  the  lower  one  alone  moves.  No  other  liv- 
ing creature  has  this  peculiarity.  The  other  beast  of  which  I 
have  told  you  (the  water-serpent),  which  always  lives  hi  the 
water,  hates  the  crocodile  with  a  mortal  hatred.  When  it  sees 
the  crocodile  sleeping  on  the  ground  with  its  mouth  wide  open, 
it  rolls  itself  in  the  slime  and  mud  in  order  to  become  more 
slippery.  Then  it  leaps  into  the  throat  of  the  crocodile  and  is 
swallowed  down  into  its  stomach.  Here  it  bites  and  tears  its 
way  out  again,   but  the  crocodile  dies  on  accoimt  of  its  wounds. 

*«Wlio   is   a   whale   to   virginity   and   devours   up   all   the   fry   it   finds.  »  — 
<  All's  Well  that  Ends  Well,>  iv.  3. 

f«  Crocodile  tears  »  are  proverbial.     Cf: 

"As  the  mournful  crocodile 
With  sorrow  snares  relenting  passengers. >> — <2  Henry  VI. ,>  iii.  i, 
«Each  drop  she  falls  would  prove  a  crocodile. » — <Othello,>  iv.  i. 


BESTIARIES  AND  LAPIDARIES  1859 


THE  TURTLE-DOVE 


NOW  I  must  tell  you  of  another  bird  which  is  courteous  and 
beautiful,  and  which  loves  much  and  is  much  loved.  This 
is  the  turtle-dove.  The  male  and  the  female  are  always 
together  in  mountain  or  in  desert,  and  if  perchance  the  female 
loses  her  companion  never  more  will  she  cease  to  mourn  for  him. 
never  more  will  she  sit  upon  green  branch  or  leaf.  Nothing  in 
the  world  can  induce  her  to  take  another  mate,  but  she  ever 
remains  loyal  to  her  husband.  When  I  consider  the  faithfulness 
of  this  bird,  I  wonder  at  the  fickleness  of  man  and  woman. 
Many  husbands  and  wives  there  are  who  do  not  love  as  the 
turtle-dove;  but  if  the  man  bury  his  wife,  before  .he  has  eaten 
two  meals  he  desires  to  have  another  woman  in  his  arms.  The 
turtle-dove  does  not  so,  but  remains  patient  and  faithful  to  her 
companion,  waiting  if  haply  he  might  return.* 


THE  MANDR AGORA 

THE  mandragora  is  a  wild  plant,  the  like  of  which  does  not 
exist.  Many  kinds  of  medicine  can  be  made  of  its  root; 
this  root,  if  you  look  at  it  closely,  will  be  seen  to  have  the 
form  of  a  man.  The  bark  is  very  useful;  when  well  boiled  in 
water  it  helps  many  diseases.  The  skillful  physicians  gather  this 
plant  when  it  is  old,  and  they  say  that  when  it  is  plucked  it 
weeps  and  cries,  and  if  any  one  hears  the  cry  he  will  die.f  But 
those  who  gather  it  do  this  so  carefully  that  they  receive  no 
evil  from  it.  If  a  man  has  a  pain  in  his  head  or  in  his  body,  or 
in  his  hand  or  foot,  it  can  be  cured  by  this  herb.  If  you  take 
this  plant  and  beat  it  and  let  the  man  drink  of  it,  he  will  fall 
asleep  very  softly,  and  no  more  will  he  feel  pain.  J  There  are 
two  kinds  of  this  plant, —  male  and  female.  The  leaves  of  both 
are  beautiful.  The  leaf  of  the  female  is  thick  like  that  of  the 
wild  lettuce. 

*  «  Like  to  a  pair  of  loving  turtle-doves, 

That  could  not  live  asunder  day  or  night.^^  —  <i  Henry  VI.  ,>  ii.  2. 
f^Would  curses  kill  as  doth  the  mandrake's  groan. » — <2  Henry  VI., >  iii  2. 
X  <^  Not  poppy,  nor  mandragora, 
Nor  all  the  drowsy  syrups  of  the  world.»  —  <  Othello,^  iii.  3. 


l86o  BESTIARIES   AND   LAPIDARIES 


SAPPHIRE 

The  following  two  extracts  are  translated  from  <  Les  Lapidaires  Frangais 
du  Moyen  Age,>  by  Leopold  Pannier,  Paris,  1882. 

THE  sapphire  is  beautiful,  and  worthy  to  shine  on  the  fingers 
of  a  king.  In  color  it  resembles  the  sky  when  it  is  pure 
and  free  from  clouds.  J  No  precious  stone  has  greater 
virtue  or  beauty.  One  kind  of  sapphire  is  found  among  the 
pebbles  in  the  country  of  Libya;  but  that  which  comes  from  the 
land  of  the  Turk  is  more  precious.  It  is  called  the  gem  of 
gems,  and  is  of  great  value  to  men  and  women.  It  gives  com- 
fort to  the  heart  and  renders  the  limbs  strong  and  sound.  It 
takes  away  envy  and  perfidy  and  can  set  the  prisoner  at  liberty. 
He  who  carries  it  about  him  will  never  have  fear.  It  pacifies 
those  who  are  angry,  and  by  means  of  it  one  can  see  into  the 
unknown. 

It  is  very  valuable  in  medicine.  It  cools  those  who  are 
feverish  and  who  on  account  of  pain  are  covered  with  perspira- 
tion. When  powdered  and  dissolved  in  milk  it  is  good  for 
ulcers.  It  cures  headache  and  diseases  of  the  eyes  and  tongue. 
He  who  wears  it  must  live  chastely  and  honorably;  so  shall  he 
never  feel  the  distress  of  poverty. 


CORAL 

CORAL  grows  like  a  tree  in  the  sea,  and  at  first  its  color  is 
green.  When  it  reaches  the  air  it  becomes  hard  and  red. 
It  is  half  a  foot  in  length.  He  who  carries  it  will  never 
be  afraid  of  lightning  or  tempest.  The  field  in  which  it  is 
placed  will  be  very  fertile,  and  rendered  safe  from  hail  or  any 
other  kind  of  storm.  It  drives  away  evil  spirits,  and  gives  a 
gcJod  beginning  to  all  midertakings  and  brings  them  to  a  good 
end. 

JCf.  the  exquisite  line  of  Dante,  <Purgatorio,>  i.  13:  — 
<  Dolce  color  d' oriental  zaffiro.* 


i86i 


MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE   (STENDHAL) 

(1783-1842) 

BY  FREDERIC   TABER   COOPER 

>arie-Henri  Beyle,  French  novelist  and  man  of  letters,  who  is 
better  known  under  his  bizarre  pseudonym  of  Stendhal, 
is  a  somewhat  unusual  figure  among  French  writers.  He 
was  curiously  misappreciated  by  his  own  generation,  whose  literary 
movements  he  in  turn  confessedly  ignored.  He  is  recognized  to-day 
as  an  important  link  in  the  development  of  modern  fiction,  and  is 
even  discussed  concurrently  with  Balzac,  in  the  same  way  that  we 
speak  of  Dickens  and  Thackeray,   Emerson  and  Lowell. 

There  is  nothing  dramatic  in  Stendhal's  life, 
which,  viewed  impartially,  is  a  simple  and  some- 
what pathetic  record  of  failure  and  disillusion. 
He  was  six  years  older  than  Balzac,  having  been 
born  January  23d,  1783,  in  the  small  town  of 
Grenoble,  in  Dauphine,  which,  with  its  narrow 
prejudices  and  petty  formalism,  seemed  to  him 
in  after  years  *Uhe  souvenir  of  an  abominable 
indigestion.'*  He  early  developed  an  abnormal 
sensibility,  which  would  have  met  with  ready 
response  had  his  mother  lived,  but  which  a  keen 
dread    of    ridicule    taught    him    to    hide    from    an 

unsympathetic  father  and  a  still  more  unkind  aunt, — later  his  step- 
mother, Seraphie  Gagnon.  He  seemed  predestined  to  be  misunder- 
stood—  even  his  school  companions  finding  him  odd,  and  often 
amusing  themselves  at  his  expense.  Thus  he  grew  up  with  a  sens9 
of  isolation  in  his  own  home,  and  when,  in  1800,  he  had  the  opportun- 
ity of  going  to  some  distant  relatives  in  Paris,  the  Daru  family,  he 
seized  it  eagerly.  The  following  year  he  accompanied  the  younger 
Darus  to  Italy,  and  was  present  at  the  battle  of  Marengo.  This  was 
the  turning-point  of  Stendhal's  career.  He  was  dazzled  by  Napoleon's 
successes,  and  fascinated  with  the  beauty  and  gayety  of  Milan,  where 
he  found  himself  for  the  first  time  in  a  congenial  atmosphere,  and 
among  companions  animated  by  a  common  cause.  His  consequent 
sense  of  freedom  and  exaltation  knew  no  bounds.  Henceforth  Napo- 
leon was  to  be  his  hero,  and  Italy  the  land  of  his  election;  two  life- 
long passions  which  furnish  the  clew  to  much  that  is  enigmatic  in 
his  character. 


Henri  Beyle 


1 86  2  MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE 

During  the  ensuing  years,  while  he  followed  the  fortunes  of  Na- 
poleon throughout  the  Prussian  campaign  and  until  after  the  retreat 
from  Moscow,  Italy  was  always  present  in  his  thoughts,  and  when 
Waterloo  ended  his  political  and  military  aspirations  he  hastened 
back  to  Milan,  declaring  that  he  "had  ceased  to  be  a  Frenchman,** 
and  settled  down  to  a  life  of  tranquil  Bohemianism,  too  absorbed  in 
the  paintings  of  Correggio  and  in  the  operas  of  Rossini  to  be  provi- 
dent of  the  future.  The  following  years,  the  happiest  of  his  life, 
were  also  the  period  of  Stendhal's  chief  intellectual  growth, — due 
quite  as  much  to  the  influence  exerted  on  him  by  Italian  art  and 
music  as  by  his  contact  with  men  like  Manzoni,  Monti,  and  Silvio 
Pellico.  Unfortunately,  his  relations  with  certain  Italian  patriots 
aroused  the  suspicions  of  the  Austrian  police,  and  he  was  abruptly 
banished.  He  returned  to  Paris,  where  to  his  surprise  life  proved 
more  than  tolerable,  and  where  he  made  many  valuable  acquaint- 
ances, such  as  Benjamin  Constant,  Destutt  de  Tracy,  and  Prosper 
Merimee.  The  revolution  of  July  brought  him  a  change  of  fortune; 
for  he  was  in  sympathy  with  Louis  Philippe,  and  did  not  scruple  to 
accept  the  consulship  offered  him  at  Civita  Vecchia.  He  soon  found, 
however,  that  a  small  Mediterranean  seaport  was  a  poor  substitute 
for  his  beloved  Milan,  while  its  trying  climate  undoubtedly  shortened 
his  life.  In  1841  failing  health  forced  him  to  abandon  his  duties  and 
return  to  Paris,  where  he  died  of  apoplexy  on  March  23d,    1842. 

So  much  at  least  of  Stendhal's  life  must  be  known  in  order  to 
understand  his  writings;  all  of  which,  not  excepting  the  novels, 
belong  to  what  Ferdinand  Brunetiere  stigmatizes  as  "personal  litera- 
ture." Indeed,  the  chief  interest  of  many  of  his  books  lies  in  the 
side-lights  they  throw  upon  his  curious  personality.  He  was  a  man 
of  violent  contrasts,  a  puzzle  to  his  best  friends;  one  day  making  the 
retreat  from  Moscow  with  undaunted  zeal,  the  next  settling  down 
contentedly  in  Milan,  to  the  very  int  de  caf^  he  affected  to  despise. 
He  was  a  strange  combination  of  restless  energy  and  philosophic 
contemplation;,  hampered  by  a  morbid  sensibility  which  tended  to 
increase,  but  which  he  flattered  himself  that  he  "had  learned  to  hide 
under  an  irony  imperceptible  to  the  vulgar,**  yet  continually  giving 
offense  to  others  by  his  caustic  tongue.  He  SQcmed  to  need  the  tonic 
of  strong  emotions,  and  was  happiest  when  devoting  himself  heart 
and  soul  to  some  person  or  cause,  whether  a  Napoleon,  a  mistress,  or 
a  question  of  philosophy.  His  great  preoccupation  was  the  analysis 
of  the  human  mind,  an  employment  which  in  later  years  became  a 
positive  detriment.  He  was  often  led  to  attribute  ulterior  motives  to 
his  friends,  a  course  which  only  served  to  render  him  morbid  and 
unjust;  while  his  equally  pitiless  dissection  of  his  own  sensations 
often    robbed    them    of   half   their    charm.     Even    love    and   war.    his 


MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE  1863 

favorite  emotions,  left  him  disillusioned,  asking  «Is  that  all  it 
amounts  to?'>  He  always  had  a  profound  respect  for  force  of  char- 
acter, regarding  even  lawlessness  as  preferable  to  apathy ;  but  he  was 
implacable  towards  baseness  or  vulgarity.  Herein  lies,  perhaps,  th© 
chief  reason  for  Stendhal's  ill  success  in  life;  he  would  never  stoop 
to  obsequiousness  or  flattery,  and  in  avoiding  even  the  semblance  of 
self-interest,  allowed  his  fairest  chances  to  pass  him  by.  <*I  have 
little  regret  for  my  lost  opportunities, »  he  wrote  in  1835.  «In  place 
of  ten  thousand,  I  might  be  getting  twenty;  in  place  of  Chevalier,  I 
might  be  Officer  of  the  Legion  of  Honor:  but  I  should  have  had  to 
think  three  or  four  hours  a  day  of  those  platitudes  of  ambition  which 
are  dignified  by  the  name  of  politics;  I  should  have  had  to  commit 
many  base  acts:"  a  brief  but  admirable  epitome  of  Stendhal's  whole 
life  and  character. 

Aside  from  his  works  of  fiction,  Stendhal's  works  may  be  conven- 
iently grouped  under  biographies, —  <Vie  de  Haydn,  de  Mozart,  et  de 
Metastase,>  <Vie  de  Napoleon,'  <Vie  de  Rossini  > ;  literary  and  artistic 
criticism,— <Histoire  de  la  Peinture  en  Italic, >  < Racine  et  Shakespeare,' 
<  Melanges  d'Art  et  de  Litterature ' ;  travels,  —  ^  Rome,  Naples,  et 
Florence,'  <  Promenades  dans  Rome,'  ^Memoires  d'un  Touriste';  and 
one  volume  of  sentimental  psychology,  his  ^  Essai  sur  1' Amour,'  to 
which  Bourget  owes  the  suggestion  of  his  *■  Physiologic  de  I'Amour 
Moderne.'  Many  of  these  works  merit  greater  popularity,  being 
written  in  an  easy,  fluent  style,  and  relieved  by  his  inexhaustible 
fund  of  anecdote  and  personal  reminiscence.  His  books  of  travel, 
especially,  are  charming  causeries,  full  of  a  sympathetic  spontaneity 
which  more  than  atones  for  their  lack  of  method;  his  <  Walks  in 
Rome'  is  more  readable  than  two-thirds  of  the  books  since  written 
on  that  subject. 

Stendhal's  present  vogue,  however,  is  due  primarily  to  his  novels, 
to  which  he  owes  the  almost  literal  fulfillment  of  his  prophecy  that 
he  would  not  be  appreciated  until  1880.  Before  that  date  they  had 
been  comparatively  neglected,  in  spite  of  Balzac's  spontaneous  and 
enthusiastic  tribute  to  the  <  Chartreuse  de  Parme, '  and  the  appre- 
ciative criticisms  of  Taine  and  Prosper  Merimee.  The  truth  is  that 
Stendhal  was  in  some  ways  a  generation  behind  his  time,  and  often 
has  an  odd,  old-fashioned  flavor  suggestive  of  Marivaux  and  Crebillon 
fits.  On  the  other  hand,  his  psychologic  tendency  is  distinctly  mod- 
ern, and  not  at  all  to  the  taste  of  an  age  which  found  Chateaubriand 
or  Madame  de  Stael  eminently  satisfactory.  But  he  appeals  strongly 
to  the  speculating,  self-questioning  spirit  of  the  present  day,  and  Zola 
and  Bourget  in  turn  have  been  glad  to  claim  kinship  with  him. 

Stendhal,  however,  cannot  be  summarily  labeled  and  dismissed  as 
a   realist   or   psychologue   in    the    modern    acceptation    of    the    term. 


1864 


MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE 


although  he  was  a  pioneer  in  both  fields.  He  had  a  sovereign  con- 
tempt for  literary  style  or  method,  and  little  dreamed  that  he  would 
one  day  be  regarded  as  the  founder  of  a  school.  It  must  be  remem- 
bered that  he  was  a  soldier  before  he  was  a  man  of  letters,  and  his 
love  of  adventure  occasionally  got  the  better  of  his  love  of  logic, 
making  his  novels  a  curious  mixture  of  convincing  truth  and  wild 
romanticism.  His  heroes  are  singularly  like  himself,  a  mixture  of 
morbid  introspection  and  restless  energy:  he  seems  to  have  taken 
special  pleasure  in  making  them  succeed  where  he  had  failed  in  life, 
and  when  the  spirit  of  the  story-teller  gets  the  better  of  the  psycholo- 
gist, he  sends  them  on  a  career  of  adventure  which  puts  to  shame 
Dumas  pire  or  Walter  Scott.  And  yet  Stendhal  was  a  born  analyst, 
a  self-styled  "observer  of  the  human  heart *^;  and  the  real  merit  of 
his  novels  lies  in  the  marvelous  fidelity  with  which  he  interprets  the 
emotions,  showing  the  inner  workings  of  his  hero's  mind  from  day  to 
day,  and  multiplying  petty  details  with  convincing  logic.  But  in  his 
preoccupation  for  mental  conditions  he  is  apt  to  lose  sight  of  the 
material  side  of  life,  and  the  symmetry  of  his  novels  is  marred  by  a 
meagreness  of  physical  detail  and  a  lack  of  atmosphere.  Zola  has 
laid  his  finger  upon  Stendhal's  real  weakness  when  he  points  out  that 
<'the  landscape,  the  climate,  the  time  of  day,  the  weather, — Nature 
herself,  in  other  words, — never  seems  to  intervene  and  exert  an  influ- 
ence on  his  characters";  and  he  cites  a  passage  which  in  point  of 
fact  admirably  illustrates  his  meaning,  the  scene  from  the  <  Rouge  et 
Noir,*  where  Julien  endeavors  to  take  the  hand  of  Mme.  de  Renal, 
which  he  characterizes  as  "a  little  mute  drama  of  great  power, '>  add- 
ing in  conclusion :  — "  Give  that  episode  to  an  author  for  whom  the 
milieu  exists,  and  he  will  make  the  night,  with  its  odors,  its  voices, 
its  soft  voluptuousness,  play  a  part  in  the  defeat  of  the  woman. 
And  that  author  will  be  in  the  right;  his  picture  will  be  more  com- 
plete.'* It  is  this  tendency  to  leave  nature  out  of  consideration  which 
gives  Stendhal's  characters  a  flavor  of  abstraction,  and  caused  Sainte- 
Beuve  to  declare  in  disgust  that  they  were  "  not  human  beings,  but 
ingeniously  constructed  automatons.  >>  Yet  it  is  unfair  to  conclude 
with  Zola,  that  Stendhal  was  a  man  for  whom  the  outside  world  did 
not  exist;  he  was  not  insensible  to  the  beauties  of  nature,  only  he 
looked  upon  them  as  a  secondary  consideration.  After  a  sympathetic 
description  of  the  Rhone  valley,  he  had  to  add,  «  But  the  interest  of 
a  landscape  is  insufficient;  in  the  long  run,  some  moral  or  historical 
interest  is  indispensable.**  Yet  he  recognized  explicitly  the  influence 
of  climate  and  environment  upon  character,  and  seems  to  have  been 
sensible  of  his  own  shortcomings  as  an  author.  « I  abhor  material 
descriptions,"  he  confesses  in  <  Souvenirs  d'Egoti.sme :  *  **the  ennui  of 
making  them  deters  me  from  writing  novels," 


MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE  1 865 

Nevertheless,  aside  from  his  short  <Chroniques>  and  <Nouvelles,> 
and  the  posthumous  <  Lamiel  >  which  he  probably  intended  to  destroy, 
Stendhal  has  left  four  stories  which  deserve  detailed  consideration: 
<Armance,>  ^  Le  Rouge  et  Le  Noir,>  <  La  Chartreuse  de  Parme,^  and 
the  fragmentary  novel  <  Lucien  Leuwen.' 

As  has  been  justly  pointed  out  by  Stendhal's  sympathetic  biogra- 
pher, Edouard  Rod,  the  heroes  of  the  four  books  are  essentially  of 
one  type,  and  all  more  or  ,less  faithful  copies  of  himself;  having 
in  common  a  need  of  activity,  a  thirst  for  love,  a  keen  sensibility, 
and  an  unbounded  admiration  for  Napoleon — and  differing  only  by 
reason  of  the  several  milieus  in  which  he  has  placed  them.  The  first 
of  these,  <Armance,>  appeared  in  1827.  The  hero,  Octave,  is  an  aris- 
tocrat, son  of  the  Marquis  de  Malivert,  who  "  was  very  rich  before 
the  Revolution,  and  when  he  returned  to  Paris  in  18 14,  thought  him- 
self beggared  on  an  income  of  twenty  or  thirty  thousand.'^  Octave 
is  the  most  exaggerated  of  all  Stendhal's  heroes;  a  mysterious,  som- 
bre being,  <<  a  misanthrope  before  his  time  ^^ ;  coupling  with  his  pride 
of  birth  a  consciousness  of  its  vanity :  —  ^*  Had  heaven  made  me  the 
son  of  a  manufacturer  of  cloth,  I  should  have  worked  at  my  desk 
from  the  age  of  sixteen,  while  now  my  sole  occupation  has  been 
luxury.  I  should  have  had  less  pride  and  more  happiness.  Ah,  how 
I  despise  myself !  ^'  Yet  it  is  part  of  Octave's  pretensions  to  regard 
himself  as  superior  to  love.  When  he  discovers  his  passion  for  his 
cousin  Armance,  he  is  overwhelmed  with  despair:  <*I  am  in  love,^^  he 
said  in  a  choked  voice,  *^  I,  in  love!  Great  GodP^  The  object  of  this 
reluctant  passion,  Armance  de  Zohiloff,  is  a  poor  orphan,  dependent 
upon  a  rich  relative.  Like  Octave,  she  struggles  against  her  affec- 
tion, but  for  better  reasons :  <*  The  world  will  look  upon  me  as  a 
lady's-maid  who  has  entrapped  the  son  of  the  family.  >>  The  history 
of  their  long  and  secret  struggle  against  this  growing  passion,  com- 
plicated by  outside  incidents  and  intrigues,  forms  the  bulk  of  the 
volume.  At  last  Octave  is  wounded  in  a  duel,  and  moved  by  the 
belief  that  he  is  dying,  they  mutually  confess  their  affection.  Octave 
unexpectedly  recovers,  and  as  Armance  about  this  time  receives  an 
inheritance  from  a  distant  relative,  the  story  promises  to  end  hap- 
pily; but  at  the  last  moment  he  is  induced  to  credit  a  calumny 
against  her,  and  commits  suicide,  when  Armance  retires  to  a  con- 
vent. The  book  is  distinctly  inferior  to  his  later  efforts,  and  M.  Rod 
is  the  first  to  find  hidden  beauties  in  it. 

Very  different  was  his  next  book,  ^  Le  Rouge  et  Le  Noir,*  the 
Army  and  the  Priesthood,  which  appeared  in  1830,  and  is  now  recog- 
nized as  Stendhal's  masterpiece.  As  its  singular  name  is  intended 
to  imply,  it  deals  with  the  changed  social  conditions  which  con- 
fronted the  young  men  of  France   after  the  downfall  of  Napoleon, — 


lS66  MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE 

the  reaction  against  war  and  military  glory  in  favor  of  the  Church; 
a  topic  which  greatly  occupied  Stendhal,  and  which  is  well  summed 
up  in  the  words  of  his  hero  Julien: — "When  Bonaparte  made  him- 
self talked  about,  France  was  afraid  of  invasion ;  military  merit  was 
necessary  and  fashionable.  To-day  one  sees  priests  of  forty  with 
appointments  of  a  hundred  thousand  francs,  three  times  that  of 
Napoleon's  famous  generals ;  '^  and  he  concludes,  <*  The  thing  to  do  is 
to  be  a  priest.^* 

This  Julien  Sorel  is  the  son  of  a  shrewd  but  ignorant  peasant, 
owner  of  a  prosperous  saw-mill  in  the  small  town  of  Verrieres,  in 
Franche-Comte.  *'  He  was  a  small  young  man,  of  feeble  appearance, 
with  irregular  but  delicate  features,  and  an  aquiline  nose ;  .  ,  . 
who  could  have  divined  that  that  girlish  face;  so  pale  and  gentle, 
hid  an  indomitable  resolution  to  expose  himself  to  a  thousand  deaths 
sooner  than  not  make  his  fortune?^'  His  only  schooling  is  gained 
from  a  cousin,  an  old  army  surgeon,  who  tatight  him  Latin  and 
inflamed  his  fancy  with  stories  of  Napoleon,  and  from  the  aged  Abbe 
Chelan  who  grounds  him  in  theology, — for  Julien  had  proclaimed  his 
intention  of  studying  for  the  priesthood.  By  unexpected  good  luck, 
his  Latin  earned  him  an  appointment  as  tutor  to  the  children  of 
M.  de  Renal,  the  pompous  and  purse-proud  Mayor  of  Verrieres. 
Julien  is  haunted  by  his  peculiar  notions  of  duties  which  he  owes  it 
to  himself  to  perform  as  steps  towards  his  worldly  advancement;  for 
circumstances  have  made  him  a  consummate  hypocrite.  One  of  these 
duties  is  to  make  love  to  Mme.  de  Renal :  <^  Why  should  he  not  be 
loved  as  Bonaparte,  while  still  poor,  had  been  loved  by  the  brilliant 
Mme.  de  Beauharnais  ?  '^  His  pursuit  of  the  Mayor's  gentle  and  inex- 
perienced wife  proves  only  too  successful,  but  at  last  reaches  the  ears 
of  the  Abbe  Chelan,  whose  influence  compels  Julien  to  leave  Verrieres 
and  go  to  the  Seminary  at  Besangon,  to  finish  his  theological  studies. 
His  stay  at  the  Seminary  was  full  of  disappointment,  for  <*it  was  in 
vain  that  he  made  himself  small  and  insignificant,  he  could  not 
please:  he  was  too  different.'^  At  last  he  has  a  chance  to  go  to 
Paris,  as  secretary  to  the  influential  Marquis  de  La  Mole,  who  inter- 
ests himself  in  Julien  and  endeavors  to  advance  him  socially.  The 
Marquis  has  a  daughter,  Mathilde,  a  female  coimterpart  of  Stendhal's 
heroes;  with  exalted  ideas  of  duty,  and  a  profound  reverence  for 
Marguerite  of  Navarre,  who  dared  to  ask  the  executioner  for  the  head 
of  her  lover,  Boniface  de  La  Mole,  executed  April  30th,  1574.  Ma- 
thilde always  assumed  mourning  on  April  30th.  "I  know  of  nothing, » 
she  declared,  "  except  condemnation  to  death,  which  distinguishes  a 
man:  it  is  the  only  thing  which  cannot  be  bought. >>  Julien  soon  con- 
ceives it  his  duty  to  win  Mathilde's  affections,  and  the  love  passages 
which  ensue  between  these  two  <'  esprits  superieurs  >>  are  singular  in 


MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE  1 867 

the  extreme:  they  arrive  at  love  only  through  a  complicated  intellect- 
ual process,  in  which  the  question  of  duty,  either  to  themselves  or  to 
each  other,  is  always  paramount.  At  last  it  becomes  necessary  to 
confess  their  affection  to  the  Marquis,  who  is  naturally  furious.  «For 
the  first  time  in  his  life  this  nobleman  forgot  his  manners:  he  over- 
whelmed him  with  atrocious  insults,  worthy  of  a  cab-driver.  Perhaps 
the  novelty  of  these  oaths  was  a  distraction. >>  What  hurts  him  most 
is  that  Mathilde  will  be  plain  Mme.  Sorel  and  not  a  duchess.  But  at 
this  juncture  the  father  receives  a  letter  from  Mme.  de  Renal,  tell- 
ing of  her  relations  with  Julien,  and  accusing  him  of  having  deliber- 
ately won  Mathilde  in  order  to  possess  her  wealth.  Such  baseness 
the  Marquis  cannot  pardon,  and  at  any  cost  he  forbids  the  marriage. 
Julien  returns  immediately  to  Verrieres,  and  finding  Mme.  de  Renal 
in  church,  deliberately  shoots  her.  She  ultimately  recovers  from  her 
wound,  but  Julien  is  nevertheless  condemned  and  guillotined.  Mme. 
de  Renal  dies  of  remorse,  while  Mathilde,  emulating  Marguerite  de 
Navarre,  buries  Julien's  head  with  her  own  hands. 

The  ^Chartreuse  de  Parme,^  although  written  the  same  year  as 
the  <  Rouge  et  Noir,>  was  not  published  until  1839,  two  years  before 
his  death,  and  was  judged  his  best  effort.  ^^  He  has  written  <  The 
Modern  Prince,^  >^  declared  Balzac,  ^^the  book  which  Macchiavelli  would 
have  written  if  he  had  been  living  exiled  from  Italy  in  the  nineteenth 
century. >>  The  action  takes  place  at  Parma;  and  as  a  picture  of  court 
life  in  a  small  Italian  principality,  with  all  its  jealousies  and  intrigues, 
the  book  is  certainly  a  masterpiece.  But  it  is  marred  by  the  extrava- 
gance of  its  plot.  The  hero,  Fabrice,  is  the  younger  son  of  a  proud 
and  bigoted  Milanese  nobleman,  the  Marquis  del  Dongo,  who  "joined 
a  sordid  avarice  to  a  host  of  other  fine  qualities,  >^  and  in  his  devotion 
to  the  House  of  Austria  was  implacable  towards  Napoleon.  Fabrice, 
however,  was  "a  young  man  susceptible  of  enthusiasm, >>  and  on 
learning  of  Napoleon's  return  from  Elba,  hastened  secretly  to  join 
him,  and  participated  in  the  battle  of  Waterloo.  This  escapade  is 
denounced  by  his  father  to  the  Austrian  police,  and  on  his  return 
Fabrice  is  forced  to  take  refuge  in  Swiss  territory.  About  this  time 
his  aunt  Gina,  the  beautiful  Countess  Pietranera,  goes  to  live  at 
Parma;  and  to  conceal  a  love  affair  with  the  prime  minister  Mosca 
marries  the  old  Duke  of  Sanseverina-Taxis,  who  obligingly  leaves  on 
his  wedding-day  for  a  distant  embassy.  Gina  has  always  felt  a 
strong  interest  for  Fabrice,  which  later  ripens  into  a  passion.  It  is 
agreed  that  Fabrice  shall  study  for  the  priesthood,  and  that  Count 
Mosca  will  use  his  influence  to  have  him  made  Archbishop  of  Parma, 
an  office  frequently  held  in  the  past  by  Del  Dongos.  Unfortunately 
Fabrice  is  drawn  into  a  quarrel  with  a  certain  Giletti,  a  low  comedy 
actor,   whom    he    kills   in    self-defense.      Ordinarily    the    killing    of   a 


1 868  MARIE-HENRI  BEYLE 

fellow  of  Giletti's  stamp  by  a  Del  Dongo  would  have  been  considered 
a  trifling  matter;  but  this  offense  assumes  importance  through  the 
efforts  of  a  certain  political  faction  to  discredit  the  minister  through 
his  protege.  The  situation  is  further  complicated  by  the  Prince,  Ernest 
IV.,  who  has  come  under  the  spell  of  Gina's  beauty,  and  furious  at 
finding  her  obdurate,  is  glad  of  an  opportunity  to  humiliate  her. 
Fabrice  is  condemned  to  ten  years'  imprisonment  in  the  Farnese 
tower,  the  Prince  treacherously  disregarding  his  promise  of  pardon. 
From  this  point  the  plot  becomes  fantastic.  From  his  window  in  the 
tower,  Fabrice  overlooks  that  of  Clelia,  daughter  of  General  Fabio 
Conti,  governor  of  the  prison.  It  is  a  case  of  mutual  love  at  first 
sight,  and  for  months  the  two  hold  communication  by  signs  above 
the  heads  of  the  passing  sentries.  After  his  fabulous  escape,  eiTected 
by  the  help  of  his  aunt,  Fabrice  is  inconsolable,  and  at  length  returns 
volimtarily  to  the  tower  in  order  to  be  near  Clelia.  It  is  not  until 
after  the  death  of  the  Prince  that  the  Duchess  obtains  Fabrice's 
pardon  from  his  son  and  successor.  At  last  Clelia  dies,  and  Fabrice 
enters  the  neighboring  monastery,  the  Chartreuse  of  Parma. 

Fabrice's  experiences  on  the  battle-field  of  Waterloo,  where  as  a 
raw  youth  he  first  <<smelled  powder,  ^^  are  recounted  with  a  good  deal 
of  realistic  detail.  They  suggest  a  comparison  with  a  book  of  more 
recent  date  devoted  to  a  similar  subject,  Stephen  Crane's  <  Red  Badge 
of  Courage,*  though  of  course  the  latter  does  not  approach  Stendhal 
in  artistic  self-restraint  and  mastery  over  form. 

The  remaining  novel,  <  Lucien  Leuwen,*  was  left  in  an  unfinished 
state,  and  thus  published  after  the  author's  death,  under  the  title  of 
<  Le  Chasseur  Vert.*  Recently  they  have  been  republished,  under 
the  name  of  <  Lucien  Leuwen,*  with  additional  material  which  the 
editor,  M.  Jean  de  Mitty,  claims  to  have  deciphered  from  almost 
illegible  manuscripts  found  in  the  library  at  Grenoble.  But  even 
without  these  additions  there  is  enough  to  show  that  *  Lucien 
Leuwen  *  would  have  been  one  of  his  best  efforts,  second  only,  per- 
haps, to  the  <  Rouge  et  Noir.  *  The  hero,  Lucien,  is  the  son  of  a  rich 
financier,  who  <<was  never  out  of  temper  and  never  took  a  serious 
tone  with  his  son,**  but  cheerfully  paid  his  debts,  saying  «A  son  is 
a  creditor  provided  by  nature.'*  Out  of  mere  ennui  from  lack  of 
serious  employment,  Lucien  enters  as  sub-lieutenant  a  regiment  of 
Lancers  in  garrison  at  Nancy.  He  has  no  illusions  about  military 
life  in  times  of  peace :  — "  I  shall  wage  war  only  upon  cigars ;  I  shall 
become  the  pillager  of  a  military  cafe  in  the  gloomy  garrison  of  an 
ill-paved  little  town.  .  .  .  What  glory!  My  soul  will  be  well 
caught  when  I  present  myself  to  Napoleon  in  the  next  world.  ^No 
doubt,*  he  will  say,  <  you  were  dying  of  hunger  when  you  took  up 
this  life  ?  *      <  No,  General  *  I  shall  reply,  *  I  thought  I  was  imitating 


MARIE-HENRI  BEYLE  1869 

you.*>*  His  early  experiences  at  Nancy,  his  subsequent  meeting  with 
and  love  for  Mme.  de  Chasteller,  are  admirable  equally  for  their 
moderation  and  their  fidelity. 

Since  Stendhalism  has  become  a  cult,  so  much  has  been  written 
on  the  subject  that  a  complete  bibliography  of  Stendhaliana  would 
occupy  several  pages.  Aside  from  the  well-known  criticisms  of  Bal- 
zac, Taine,  and  Sainte-Beuve,  the  most  important  contributions  to  the 
subject  are  the  article  by  Zola  in  <  Romanciers  Naturalistes,^  th^t 
by  Bourget  in  <  Essais  de  Psychologic  Contemporaine,*  and  the  biogra- 
phy by  Edouard  Rod  in  the  <  Grands  Ecrivains  Frangais  ^  (Great 
French  Writers)  Series.  Thanks  to  the  zeal  of  M.  Casimir  Stry- 
ienski,  a  considerable  amount  of  autobiographical  material  has  also 
been  brought  to  light:  (Journal  de  Stendhal,)  (Vie  de  Henri  Brou- 
lard,*  and  <  Souvenirs  d'Egotisme,'  which,  together  with  his  <  Corre- 
spondence,^ are  indispensable  for  a  true  knowledge  of  the  man. 


PRINCESS   SANSEVERINA'S   INTERVIEW 
From  <La  Chartreuse  de  Parme* 

WHILE  Fabrice  was  gone  a-hunting  after  love  a(i ventures  in 
a  small  village  close  by  Parma,  the  Fiscal  General,  Rassi, 
unaware  that  he  was  so  near,  continued  to  treat  his  case 
as  though  he  had  been  a  Liberal.  The  witnesses  for  the  defense 
he  pretended ,  that  he  could  not  find,  or  rather  that  he  had  fright- 
ened them  off;  and  finally,  after  nearly  a  year  of  suc"h  sharp 
practice,  and  about  two  months  after  Fabrice's  last  return  to 
Bologna,  on  a  certain  Friday,  the  Marquise  Raversi,  intoxicated 
with  joy,  stated  publicly  in  her  salon  that  on  the  following  day 
*^  the  sentence  which  had  just  been  passed  upon  that  little  Del 
Dongo  would  be  presented  to  the  Prince  for  signature,  and  would 
be  approved  by  him.^*  Shortly  afterwards  the  Duchess  learned 
these  remarks  of  her  enemy. 

"  The  Count  must  be  very  poorly  served  by  his  agents,  '*  she 
said  to  herself :  *^  only  this  morning  he  was  sure  that  sentence 
could  not  be  passed  inside  of  a  week:  perhaps  he  would  not  be 
sorry  to  have  my  young  Grand  Vicar  removed  from  Parma  some 
day.  But,*^  she  added,  ^*  we  shall  see  him  come  back,  and  he 
shall  be  our  Archbishop. '^     The  Duchess  rang. 


1870 


MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE 


**  Siimmon  all  the  servants  to  the  waiting-room,  '^  she  said  to 
her  valet-de-chambre,  *^  even  the  cooks;  go  and  obtain  from  the 
officer  in  command  the  requisite  permit  for  four  post-horses;  and 
see  that  in  less  than  half  an  hour  these  horses  are  attached  to 
my  landau.  '*  All  her  women  were  soon "  busied  in  packing  the 
trunks:  the  Duchess  hastily  donned  a  traveling  dress,  without 
once  sending  word  to  the  Count;  the  idea  of  amusing  herself  at 
his  expense  filled  her  with  joy. 

**  My  friend,^'  she  said  to  the  assembled  servants,  *'is  about 
to  suffer  condemnation  by  default  for  having  had  the  audacity  to 
defend  his  life  against  a  madman;  it  was  Giletti  who  meant 
to  kill  him.  You  have  all  been  able  to  see  how  gentle  and  in- 
offensive Fabrice's  character  is.  Justly  incensed  at  this  atrocious 
injury,  I  am  starting  for  Florence.  I  shall  leave  ten  years'  wages 
for  each  of  you;  if  you  are  unhappy,  write  to  me;  and  so  long 
as  I  have  a  sequin,  there  shall  be  something  for  you.-" 

The  Duchess  felt  exactly  as  she  spoke,  and  at  her  last  words 
the  servants  burst  into  tears;  she  herself  had  moist  eyes.  Sfie 
added  in  a  voice  of  emotion :  —  ^*  Pray  to  God  for  me  and  for 
Monsigneur  Fabrice  del  Dongo,  first  Grand  Vicar  of  this  Diocese, 
who  will  be  condemned  to-morrow  morning  to  the  galleys,  or 
what  would  be  less  stupid,  to  the  penalty  01  death.  ^^ 

The  tears  of  the  servants  redoubled,  and  little  by  little 
changed  into  cries  which  were  very  nearly  seditious.  The  Duch- 
ess entered  her  carriage  and  drove  directly  to  the  palace  of  the 
Prince.  In  spite  of  the  untimely  hour,  she  solicited  an  audience, 
through  General  Fontana,  acting  aide-de-camp.  She  was  nowise 
in  full  court  toilette,  a  fact  which  threw  that  aide-de-camp  into 
a  profound  stupor. 

The  Prince,  for  his  part,  was  by  no  means  surprised,  still 
less  annoyed,  at  this  request  for  an  audience.  *  We  are  going 
to  see  tears  shed  by  lovely  eyes,'^  said  he,  rubbing  his  hands; 
"  she  is  coming  to  ask  for  grace ;  at  last  that  proud  beauty 
has  to  humble  herself!  Really  she  has  been  too  insupportable 
with  her  little  independent  airs!  Those  eloquent  eyes  always 
seemed  to  be  saying  to  me,  at  the  least  thing  which  annoyed 
her,  ^  Naples  or  Milan  would  be  an  abode  offering  very  different 
attractions  from  those  of  your  small  town  of  Parma.*  True 
enough,  I  do  not  reign  over  Naples  or  Milan;  but  all  the  same, 
this  fine  lady  has  come  to  ask  me  something  which  depends 
exclusively    upon    me,   and   which    she    is   burning   to   obtain.      I 


MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE 


1871 


always  thought  the  coming  of  that  nephew  would  give  me  some 
hold  upon  her.^* 

While  the  Prince  was  smiling  over  his  thoughts,  and  giving 
himself  up  to  all  these  agreeable  anticipations,  he  was  striding  up 
and  down  his  cabinet,  at  the  door  of  which  General  Fontana  still 
remained  standing,  erect  and  stiff  as  a  soldier  at  carry-arms. 
Seeing  the  Prince's  flashing  eye  and  recalling  the  Duchess's 
traveling  dress,  he  prepared  for  a  dissolution  of  the  monarchy. 
His  confusion  knew  no  bounds  when  he  heard  the  Prince's  order: 
^*  Beg  Madame  the  Duchess  to  wait  a  small  quarter  of  an  hour.  *^ 
The  general-aide-de-camp  executed  a  right-about-face,  like  a  sol- 
dier on  parade ;  the  Prince  still  smiled.  ^^  Fontana  is  not  accus- 
tomed, "  he  said  to  himself,  "  to  see  our  proud  Duchess  kept 
waiting.  The  astonished  face  with  which  he  has  gone  to  tell  her 
*to  wait  that  small  quarter  of  an  hour^  will  pave  the  way  for 
those  touching  tears  which  this  cabinet  is  about  to  witness.*^ 
This  small  quarter  of  an  hour  was  delicious  to  the  Prince;  he 
paced  the  floor  with  a  firm  and  measured  step,  he  reigned. 
"  The  important  thing  now  is  to  say  nothing  which  is  not  per- 
fectly in  keeping.  It  will  not  do  to  forget  that  she  is  one  of 
the  highest  ladies  of  my  court.  How  would  Louis  XIV.  have 
spoken  to  the  princesses  his  daughters  when  he  had  occasion  to 
be  displeased  with  them  ?  '*  and  his  eyes  sought  the  portrait  of 
the  great  king. 

The  amusing  part  of  the  matter  was  that  the  Prince  did  not 
even  think  of  asking  himself  whether  he  would  show  clemency  to 
Fabrice,  and  how  far  such  clemency  would  go.  Finally,  at  the 
end  of  twenty  minutes,  the  faithful  Fontana  presented  himself 
anew  at  the  door,  but  without  uttering  a  word.  ^*  The  Duch- 
ess Sanseverina  may  enter, '^  cried  the  Prince  with  a  theatrical 
air.  "  The  tears  are  about  to  commence,  **  he  told  himself,  and 
as  if  to  be  prepared  for  such  a  spectacle,  he  drew  out  his  hand- 
kerchief. 

Never  had  the  Duchess  appeared  so  gay  and  charming;  she 
did  not  look  twenty-five.  The  poor  aide-de-camp,  seeing  that  her 
light  and  rapid  footstep  barely  seemed  to  skim  the  carpet,  was  on 
the  point  of  losing  his  reason  once  for  all. 

*^  I  must  crave  many  pardons  of  your  Most  Serene  Highness,  '* 
said  the  Duchess  in  her  soft  tones  of  careless  gayety :  ^*  I  have 
taken  the  liberty  of  presenting  myself  in  a  toilette  which  is  not 
altogether  appropriate;  but  your  Highness  has  so  accustomed  me 


1872 


MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE 


to  his  favors  that  I  have  ventured  to  hope  that  he  would  accord 
me  this  additional  grace." 

The  Duchess  spoke  quite  slowly,  so  as  to  give  herself  time  to 
enjoy  the  expression  of  the  Prince.  It  was  delicious,  on  account 
of  his  profound  astonishment,  and  that  remnant  of  grand  airs 
which  the  pose  of  his  head  and  arms  still  betrayed.  The  Prince 
had  remained  as  if  struck  by  a  thunderbolt;  from  time  to  time, 
he  exclaimed,  in  his  high-pitched  voice,  shrill  and  perturbed,  as 
though  articulating  with  difficulty:  *■'■  How  is  this?  hou>  is  this?** 
After  concluding  her  compliment,  the  Duchess,  as  though  from 
respect,  afforded  him  ample  time  to  reply;  then  she  added:  — 

**  I  venture  to  hope  that  your  Most  Serene  Highness  will 
deign  to  pardon  the  incongruity  of  my  costume : "  but  as  she 
spoke,  her  mocking  eyes  flashed  with  so  bright  a  gleam  that  the 
Prince  could  not  meet  them.  He  looked  at  the  ceiling,  a  sign 
with  him  of  the  most  extreme  embarrassment. 

^'-  How  is  this  ?  how  is  this  ? "  he  said  to  himself  again ;  then 
by  good  luck,  he  found  a  phrase :  ^^  Madame  la  Duchesse,  pray 
be  seated,*^  and  he  himself  pushed  forward  a  chair,  with  fairly 
good  grace.  The  Duchess  was  by  no  means  insensible  to  this 
attention,  and  she  moderated  the  petulance  of  her  glance. 

**  How  is  this  ?  how  is  this  ? "  still  repeated  the  Prince  in- 
wardly, shifting  so  uneasily  in  his  chair  that  one  would  have 
said  that  he  could  not  find  a  secure  position. 

"  I  am  going  to  take  advantage  of  the  freshness  of  the  night 
to  travel  post,'*  resumed  the  Duchess,  "and  as  my  absence  may 
be  of  some  duration,  I  was  unwilling  to  leave  the  territory  of 
your  Most  Serene  Highness  without  expressing  my  thanks  for 
•all  the  favors  which  for  five  years  your  Highness  has  deigned  to 
show  me."  At  these  words  the  Prince  at  last  understood;  he 
turned  pale.  It  was  as  man  of  the  world  that  he  felt  it  most 
keenly,  on  finding  himself  mistaken  in  his  predictions.  Then  he 
assumed  a  grand  air,  in  every  way  worthy  of  the  portrait  of 
Louis  XIV.,  which  was  before  his  eyes.  "Admirable,"  said  the 
Duchess  to  herself,   "there  is  a  man." 

"  And  what  is  the  motive  of  this  sudden  departure  ? "  asked 
the  Prince,  in  a  fairly  firm  tone. 

"I  have  contemplated  leaving,  for  some  time,"  replied  the 
Duchess,  "and  a  slight  insult  which  has  been  shown  to  Mo?t- 
signor  del  Dongo,  who  is  to  be  condemned  to-morrow  to  death 
or  to  the  galleys  makes  me  hasten  my  departure." 


MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE 


1873 


« And  to  what  city  are  you  going  ?  '* 

^*  To  Naples,  I  think.  ^^  As  she  arose,  she  added,  ^*  It  only 
remains  for  me  to  take  leave  of  your  Most  Serene  Highness, 
and  to  thank  him  very  humbly  for  all  his  earlier  kindnesses.* 
She,  on  her  part,  spoke  with  so  firm  an  air  that  the  Prince  saw 
clearly  that  in  a  few  seconds  all  would  be  finished.  He  knew 
that  if  a  triumphant  departure  was  once  effected,  all  compromise 
would  be  impossible.  She  was  not  the  woman  to  retrace  her 
steps.      He  hastened  after  her. 

"But  you  know  very  well,  Madame  la  Duchesse,"  he  said, 
taking  her  hand,  "  that  I  have  always  regarded  you  with  a 
friendship  to  which  it  needed  only  a  word  from  you  to  give 
another  name.  But  a  murder  has  been  committed;  there  is  no 
way  of  denying  that.  I  have  intrusted  the  conduct  of  the  case 
to  my  best  judges     .     .      .* 

At  these  words  the  Duchess  drew  herself  up  to  her  full 
height.  All  semblance  of  respect,  or  even  of  urbanity,  disap- 
peared in  a  flash.  The  outraged  woman  was  clearly  revealed, 
the  outraged  woman  addressing  herself  to  the  one  whom  she 
knows  to  be  of  bad  faith.  It  was  with  an  expression  of  keenest 
anger  and  even  of  contempt  that  she  said  to  the  Prince,  dwell- 
ing upon  every  word :  — 

"  I  am  leaving  forever  the  States  of  your  Most  Serene  High- 
ness, in  order  that  I  shall  never  again  hear  mentioned  the  Fiscal 
Rassi,  or  the  other  infamous  assassins  who  have  condemned  my 
nephew  and  so  many  others  to  death.  If  your  Most  Serene  High- 
ness does  not  wish  to  mingle  a  tinge  of  bitterness  with  the  last 
moments  which  I  am  to  pass  with  a  prince  who  is  both  polite 
and  entertaining  when  he  is  not  misled,  I  beg  him  very  humbly 
not  to  recall  the  thought  of  those  infamous  judges  who  sell 
themselves  for  a  thousand  crowns  or  a  decoration.* 

The  admirable  accent,  and  above  all  the  tone  of  sincerity, 
with  which  these  words  were  uttered,  made  the  Prince  tremble; 
for  an  instant  he  feared  to  see  his  dignity  compromised  by  a 
still  more  direct  accusation.  On  the  whole,  however,  his  sensa- 
tions quickly  culminated  in  one  of  pleasure.  He  admired  the 
Duchess,  and  at  this  moment  her  entire  person  attained  a  sub- 
lime beauty. 

*  Heavens!  how  beautiful  she  is,*  the  Prince  said  to  himself: 
"one  may  well  overlook  something  in  so  unique  a  woman,  one 
whose    like    perhaps    is    not    to    be   found   in    all    Italy.  —  Well, 


i874 


MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE 


with  a  little  diplomacy  it  might  not  be  altogether  impossible 
to  make  her  mine. —  There  is  a  wide  difference  between  such 
a  being  and  that  doll  of  a  Marquise  Balbi;  besides,  the  latter 
steals  at  least  three  hundred  thousand  francs  a  year  from  my 
poor  subjects. —  But  did  I  understand  her  aright?**  he  thought 
all  of  a  sudden :  *^  she  said,  ^  condemned  my  nephew  and  so  many 
others.*'*  His  anger  came  to  the  surface,  and  it  was  with  a 
haughtiness  worthy  of  supreme  rank  that  the  Prince  said,  "  And 
what  must  be   done  to  keep  Madame   from  leaving  ?  ** 

^*  Something  of  which  you  arc  not  capable,  **  replied  the  Duch- 
ess, with  an  accent  of  the  bitterest  irony  and  the  most  thinly 
disguised  contempt. 

The  Prince  was  beside  himself,  but  thanks  to  his  long  practice 
of  the  profession  of  absolute  sovereign,  he  found  the  strength  to 
resist  his  first  impulse.  *^  That  woman  must  be  mine,**  he  said 
to  himself.  "  I  owe  myself  at  least  that ;  then  I  must  let  her 
perish  tmder  my  contempt.  If  she  leaves  this  room,  I  shall  never 
see  her  again.**  But,  intoxicated  as  he  was  at  this  moment  with 
wrath  and  hatred,  how  was  he  to  find  words  which  would  at  once 
satisfy  what  was  due  to  himself  and  induce  the  Duchess  not  to 
desert  his  court  on  the  instant  ?  ^*  A  gesture,  **  he  thought,  "  is 
something  which  can  neither  be  repeated  nor  turned  into  ridi-. 
cule,**  and  he  went  and  placed  himself  between  the  Duchess  and 
the  door  of  his  cabinet.  Just  then  he  heard  a  slight  tapping  at 
this  door. 

"  Who  is  this  jackanapes  ?  **  he  cried,  at  the  top  of  his  lungs, 
**who  is  this  jackanapes  who  comes  here,  thrusting  his  idiotic 
presence  upon  me  ?  **  Poor  General  Fontana  showed  his  face,  pale 
and  in  evident  discomfiture,  and  with  the  air  of  a  man  at  his 
last  gasp,  indistinctly  pronounced  these  words: — **  His  Excellency 
Count  Mosca  solicits  the  honor  of  being  admitted.** 

^^  Let  him  enter,  **  said  the  Prince  in  a  loud  voice ;  and  as 
Mosca  made  his  salutation,   greeted  him  with :  — 

"  Well,  sir,  here  is  Madame  the  Duchess  Sanseverina,  who 
declares  that  she  is  on  the  point  of  leaving  Parma  to  go  and 
settle  at  Naples,  and  has  made  me  saucy  speeches  into  the 
bargain.  ** 

^*  How  is  this  ?  **  said  Mosca,  turning  pale. 

"What,  then  you  knew  nothing  of  this  project  of  departure?** 

"  Not  the  first  word.  At  six  o'clock  I  left  Madame  joyous 
and  contented.** 


MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE  1875 

This  speech  produced  an  incredible  effect  upon  the  Prince. 
First  he  glanced  at  Mosca,  whose  growing  pallor  proved  that  he 
spoke  the  truth  and  was  in  no  way  the  accomplice  of  the 
Duchess's  sudden  freak.  "  In  that  case,  **  he  said  to  himself,  ^*  I 
am  losing  her  forever.  Pleasure  and  vengeance,  everything  is 
escaping  me  at  pnce.  At  Naples  she  will  make  epigrams  with 
her  nephew  Fabrice,  about  the  great  wrath  of  the  little  Prince 
of  Parma.'*  He  looked  at  the  Duchess;  anger  and  the  most  vio- 
lent contempt  were  struggling  in  her  heart;  her  eyes  were  fixed 
at  that  moment  upon  Count  Mosca,  and  the  fine  lines  of  that 
lovely  mouth  expressed  the  most  bitter  disdain.  The  entire 
expression  of  her  face  seemed  to  say,  ^^  Vile  courtier ! ''  <<  So,  *' 
thought  the  Prince,  after  having  examined  her,  "  I  have  lost 
even  this  means  of  calling  her  back  to  our  country.  If  she 
leaves  the  room  at  this  moment,  she  is  lost  to  me.  And  the 
Lord  only  knows  what  she  will  say  in  Naples  of  my  judges, 
and  with  that  wit  and  divine  power  of  persuasion  with  which 
heaven  has  endowed  her,  she  will  make  the  whole  world  believe 
her.  I  shall  owe  her  the  reputation  of  being  a  ridiculous  tyrant, 
who  gets  up  in  the  middle  of  the  night  to  look  under  his 
bed!» 

Then,  by  an  adroit  movement,  and  as  if  striving  to  work  off 
his  agitation  by  striding  up  and  down,  the  Prince  placed  himself 
anew  before  the  door  of  his  cabinet.  The  count  was  on  his 
right,  pale,  unnerved,  and  trembling  so  that  he  had  to  lean  for 
support  upon  the  back  of  the  chair  which  the  Duchess  had  occu- 
pied at  the  beginning  of  the  audience,  and  which  the  Prince,  in 
a  moment  of  wrath,  had  hurled  to  a  distance.  The  Count  was 
really  in  love.  ^^  If  the  Duchess  goes  away,  I  shall  follow  her,  *' 
he  told  himself;  ^^but  will  she  tolerate  my  company?  that  is  the 
question. " 

On  the  left  of  the  Prince  stood  the  Duchess,  her  arms  crossed 
and  pressed  against  her  breast,  looking  at  him  with  superb 
intolerance;  a  complete  and  profound  pallor  had  succeeded  the 
glowing  colors  which  just  before  had  animated  those  exquisite 
features. 

The  Prince,  in  contrast  with  both  the  others,  had  a  high  color 
and  an  uneasy  air;  his  left  hand  played  in  a  nervous  fashion 
with  the  cross  attached  to  the  grand  cordon  of  his  order,  which 
he  wore  beneath  his  coat;  with  his  right  hand  he  caressed  his 
chin. 


1876 


MARIE-HENRI    BEYLE 


"  What  is  to  be  done  ?  ^*  he  said  to  the  Count,  not  altogether 
reaHzing  what  he  was  doing  himself,  but  yielding  to  his  habit  of 
consulting  the  latter  about  everything. 

** Indeed,  Most  Serene  Highness,  I  know  nothing  about  it,** 
answered  the  Count,  with  the  air  of  a  man  who  is  rendering  up 
his  final  sigh;  he  could  hardly  utter  the  word^  of  his  response. 
His  tone  of  voice  gave  the  Prince  the  first  consolation  which  his 
wounded  pride  had  found  during  the  interview,  and  this  slight 
satisfaction  helped  him  to  a  phrase  which  was  comforting  to  his 
self-esteem :  — 

*^  Well, "  said  he,  "  I  am  the  most  reasonable  of  all  three ;  I 
am  quite  ready  to  leave  my  position  in  the  world  entirely  out  of 
consideration.  /  am  going  to  speak  as  a  friend^^^  and  he  added 
with  a  charming  smile  of  condescension,  a  fine  imitation  of  the 
happy  times  of  Louis  XIV.,  ^^  as  a  friend  speaking  to  friends: 
Madame  la  Duchesse,  **  he  continued,  ^^  what  are  we  to  do  to 
make  you  forget  your  untimely  resolution  ?  '* 

**  Really,  I  am  at  a  loss  to  say,  '*  replied  the  Duchess,  with  a 
deep  sigh,  ^^  really,  I  am  at  a  loss  to  say:  I  have  such  a  horror 
of  Parma !  **  There  was  no  attempt  at  epigram  in  this  speech ; 
one  could  see  that  she  spoke  in  all  sincerity. 

The  Count  turned  sharply  away  from  her;  his  courtier's  soul 
was  scandalized.  Then  he  cast  a  supplicating  glance  at  the 
Prince.  With  much  dignity  and  self-possession  the  latter  allowed 
a  moment  to  pass;  then,  addressing  himself  to  the  Count,  "I 
see,**  said  he,  "that  your  charming  friend  is  altogether  beside 
herself.  It  is  perfectly  simple,  she  adores  her  nephew ;  **  and 
turning  towards  the  Duchess,  he  added  with  the  most  gallant 
glance,  and  at  the  same  time  with  the  air  which  one  assumes  in 
borrowing  a  phrase  from  a  comedy:  "  WJiat  must  %ve  do  to  find 
favor  in  these  lovely  eyes  ?  ** 

The  Duchess  had  had  time  to  reflect:  She  answered  in  a 
firm,   slow  tone,   as  if  she  were  dictating  her  ultimatum:  — 

"  His  Highness  might  write  me  a  gracious  letter,  such  as  he 
knows  so  well  how  to  write:  he  might  say  to  me,  that  being  by 
no  means  convinced  of  the  guilt  of  Fabrice  del  Dongo,  First 
Grand  Vicar  of  the  Archbishop,  he  will  refuse  to  sign  the 
sentence  when  they  come  to  present  it  to  him,  and  that  this 
unjust  procedure  shall  have  no  consequence  in  the  future.** 

"  How  is  that  ?  Unjust !  **  cried  the  Prince,  coloring  to  ^h'^ 
whites  of  his  eyes,  and  with  renewed  anger. 


MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE 


1877 


*  That  is  not  all, ''  replied  the  Duchess  with  truly  Roman 
pride,  '•^tJiis  very  evening — and,*^  she  interposed,  glancing  at  the- 
clock,  ^^it  is  already  a  quarter  past  eleven  —  this  very  evening, 
his  Most  Serene  Highness  will  send  word  to  the  Marquise  Raversi 
that  he  advises  her  to  go  into  the  country  to  recuperate  from 
the  fatigues  which  she  must  have  suffered  from  a  certain  trial 
which  she  was  discussing  in  her  salon  early  in  the  evening.^* 
The  Prince  strode  up  and  down  his  cabinet,  like  a  madman. 
"  Did  one  ever  see  such  a  woman  ?  ^'  he  exclaimed.  "  She  is  lack- 
ing in  respect  for  me.*' 

The  Duchess  replied  with  perfect  grace:  — 

*  I  have  never  in  my  life  dreamed  of  lacking  respect  for  his 
Most  Serene  Highness;  His  Highness  has  had  the  extreme  con- 
descension to  say  that  he  was  speaking  as  a  friend  to  friends. 
What  is  more,  I  have  not  the  smallest  desire  to  remain  in 
Parma,**  she  added,  glancing  at  the  Count  with  the  last  degree  of 
conteinpt.  This  glance  decided  the  Prince,  who  up  to  that  mo- 
ment had  been  quite  uncertain,  notwithstanding  that  his  words  had 
seemed  to  imply  a  promise;  he  had  a  fine  contempt  for  words. 

There  were  still  a  few  more  words  exchanged;  but  at  last 
Count  Mosca  received  the  order  to  write  the  gracious  note  soli- 
cited by  the  Duchess.  He  omitted  the  phrase  **  this  unjust  proced- 
ure shall  have  no  consequence  in  the  future.  **  "  It  is  sufficient,  ** 
said  the  Count  to  himself,  "  if  the  Prince  promises  not  to  sign 
the  sentence  which  is  to  be  presented  to  him.**  The  Prince 
thanked  him  by  a  glance,   as  he  signed. 

The  Count  made  a  great  mistake;  the  Prince  was  wearied  and 
would  have  signed  the  whole.  He  thought  that  he  was  getting 
out  of  the  scene  well,  and  the  whole  affair  was  dominated,  in  his 
eyes,  by  the  thought  — "  If  the  Duchess  leaves,  I  shall  find  my 
court  a  bore  inside  of  a  week.**  The  Count  observ^ed  that  his 
master  corrected  the  date,  and  substituted  that  of  the  next  day. 
He  looked  at  the  clock;  it  indicated  almost  midnight.  The  min- 
ister saw,  in  this  altered  date,  nothing  more  than  a  pedantic 
desire  to  afford  proof  of  exactitude  and  good  government.  As  to 
the  exile  of  the  Marquise  Raversi,  the  Prince  did  not  even  frown; 
the  Prince  had  a  special  weakness  for  exiling  people. 

*  General  Fontana !  **  he  cried,  half  opening  the  door. 

The  General  appeared,  with  such  an  astonished  and  curious  a 
face  that  a  glance  of  amusement  passed  between  the  Duchess 
and  the  Count,   and  this  glance  established  peace. 


1878 


MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE 


**  General  Fontana,  *^  said  the  Prince,  ^*  you  are  to  take  my 
•carriag-e,  which  is  waiting  iindcr  the  colonnade;  yon  will  go  to 
the  house  of  Mme.  Raversi,  and  have  yourself  announced:  if 
she  is  in  bed,  you  will  add  that  you  are  my  representative,  and 
when  admitted  to  her  chamber,  you  will  say  precisely  these  words, 
and  no  others:  —  *  Mme.  la  Marquise  Raversi,  his  Most  Serene 
Highness  requires  that  you  shall  depart  before  eight  o'clock  to- 
morrow morning,  for  your  chateau  of  Valleja.  His  Highness  will 
notify  you  when  you  may  return  to  Parma.  *  '^ 

The  Prince's  eyes  sought  those  of  the  Duchess,  but  the  latter, 
omitting  the  thanks  which  he  had  expected,  made  him  an  extremely 
respectful  reverence,  and  rapidly  left  the  room. 

^^  What  a  woman !  '*  said  the  Prince,  turning  towards  Count 
Mosca. 

Copyrighted  by  George  H.  Richmond  and  Company. 


CLELIA  AIDS    FABRICE   TO    ESCAPE 
From  <  La  Chartreuse  de  Parme  ^ 

ONE  day  —  Fabrice  had  been  a  captive  nearly  three  months, 
had  had  absolutely  no  communication  with  the  outside 
world,  and  yet  was  not  unhappy  —  Grillo  had  remained 
hanging  about  the  cell  until  a  late  hour  of  the  morning.  Fa- 
brice could  think  of  no  way  of  getting  rid  of  him,  and  was  on 
pins  and  needles;  half-past  twelve  had  struck  when  at  last  he 
was  enabled  to  open  the  little  trap  in  the  hateful  shutter. 

Clelia  was  standing  at  the  window  of  the  aviary  in  an  expect- 
ant attitude,  an  expression  of  profound  despair  on  her  contracted 
features.  As  soon  as  she  saw  Fabrice  she  signaled  to  him  that 
all  was  lost;  then,  hurrying  to  her  piano,  and  adapting  her 
words  to  the  accompaniment  of  a  recitative  from  a  favorite 
opera,  in  accents  tremulous  with  her  emotion  and  the  fear  of 
being  overheard  by  the  sentry  beneath,  she  sang:  — 

*^  Ah,  do  I  see  you  still  alive  ?  Praise  God  for  his  infinite 
mercy!  Barbone,  the  wretch  whose  insolence  you  chastised  the 
day  of  your  arrival  here,  disappeared  some  time  ago  and  for  a 
few  days  was  not  seen  about  the  citadel.  He  returned  day  be- 
fore yesterday,  and  since  then  I  have  reason  to  fear  he  has  a 
design  of  poisoning  you.  He  has  been  seen  prowling  about  the 
kitchen    of   the    palace    where    your    meals    are   prepared.       I    can 


MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE  1879 

assert  nothing  positively,  but  it  is  my  maid's  belief  that  his 
skulking  there  bodes  you  no  good.  I  was  frightened  this  morn- 
ing, not  seeing  you  at  the  usual  time;  I  thought  you  must  be 
dead.  Until  you  hear  more  from  me,  do  not  touch  the  food 
they  give  you;  I  will  try  to  manage  to  convey  a  little  chocolate 
to  you.  In  any  case,  if  you  have  a  cord,  or  can  make  one  from 
your  linen,  let  it  down  from  your  window  among  the  orange- 
trees  this  evening  at  nine  o'clock.  I  will  attach  a  stronger  cord 
to  it,  and  with  its  aid  you  can  draw  up  the  bread  and  chocolate 
I  will  have  in  readiness." 

Fabrice  had  carefully  preserved  the  bit  of  charcoal  he  had 
found  in  the  stove;  taking  advantage  of  Clelia's  more  softened 
mood,  he  formed  on  the  palm  of  his  hand  a  number  of  letters  in 
succession,  which  taken  together  made  up  these  words:  — 

"  I  love  you,  and  life  is  dear  to  me  only  when  I  can  see  you. 
Above  all  else,   send  me  paper  and  a  pencil.'^ 

As  Fabrice  had  hoped  and  expected,  the  extreme  terror,  visible 
in  the  young  girl's  face  operated  to  prevent  her  from  terminating 
the  interview  on  receipt  of  this  audacious  message;  she  only  tes- 
tified her  displeasure  by  her  looks.  Fabrice  had  the  prudence  to 
add:  —  "The  wind  blows  so  hard  to-day  that  I  couldn't  catch 
quite  all  you  said;  and  then,  too,  the  sound  of  the  piano  drowns 
your  voice.  You  were  saying  something  about  poison,  weren't 
you  —  what  was  it  ?  " 

At  these  words  the  young  girl's  terror  returned  in  all  its  vio- 
lence; she  hurriedly  set  to  work  to  describe  with  ink  a  number 
of  large  capital  letters  on  the  leaves  she  tore  from  one  of  her 
books,  and  Fabrice  was  delighted  to  see  her  at  last  adopt  the 
method  of  correspondence  that  he  had  been  vainly  advocating  for 
the  last  three  months.  But  this  system,  although  an  improve- 
ment on  the  signals,  was  less  desirable  .than  a  regular  exchange 
of  letters,  so  Fabrice  constantly  feigned  to  be  unable  to  decipher 
the  words  of  which  she  exhibited  the  component  letters. 

A  summons  from  her  father  obliged  her  to  leave  the  aviary. 
She  was  in  great  alarm  lest  he  might  come  to  look  for  her  there ; 
his  suspicious  nature  would  have  been  likely  to  scent  danger  in 
the  proximity  of  his  daughter's  window  to  the  prisoner's.  It  had 
occurred  to  Clelia  a  short  time  before,  while  so  anxiously  await- 
ing Fabrice 's  appearance,  that  pebbles  might  be  made  factors  in 
their  correspondence,  by  wrapping  the  paper  on  which  the  mes- 
sage  was   written    round    them    and    throwing    them    up    so    they 


l88o  MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE 

should  fall  within  the  open  upper  portion  of  the  screen.  The 
device  would  have  worked  well  unless  Fabrice's  keeper  chanced 
to  be  in  the  room  at  the  time. 

Our  prisoner  proceeded  to  tear  one  of  his  shirts  into  narrow 
strips,  forming  a  sort  of  ribbon.  Shortly  after  nine  o'clock  that 
evening  he  heard  a  tapping  on  the  boxes  of  the  orange-trees 
under  his  window;  he  cautiously  lowered  his  ribbon,  and  on 
drawing  it  up  again  found  attached  to  its  free  end  a  long  cord 
by  means  of  which  he  hauled  up  a  supply  of  chocolate,  and,  to 
his  inexpressible  satisfaction,  a  package  of  note-paper  and  a 
pencil.  He  dropped  the  cord  again,  but  to  no  purpose;  perhaps 
the  sentries  on  their  rounds  had  approached  the  orange-trees. 
But  his  delight  was  sufficient  for  one  evening.  He  sat  down 
and  wrote  a  long  letter  to  Clelia;  scarcely  was  it  ended  when  he 
fastened  it  to  the  cord  and  let  it  down.  For  more  than  three 
hours  he  waited  in  vain  for  some  one  to  come  and  take  it;  two 
or  three  times  he  drew  it  up  and  made  alterations  in  it.  ^*  If 
Clelia  does  not  get  my  letter  to-night,**  he  said  to  himself, 
"  while  those  ideas  of  poison  are  troubling  her  brain,  it  is  more 
than  likely  that  to-morrow  she  will  refuse  to  receive  it.** 

The  fact  was  that  Clelia  had  been  obliged  to  drive  to  the  city 
with  her  father.  Fabrice  knew  how  matters  stood  when  he  heard 
the  General's  carriage  enter  the  court  about  half-past  twelve;  he 
knew  it  was  the  General's  carriage  by  the  horses'  step.  What 
was  his  delight  when,  shortly  after  hearing  the  jingle  of  the 
General's  spurs  as  he  crossed  the  esplanade,  and  the  rattle  of 
muskets  as  the  sentries  presented  arms,  he  felt  a  gentle  tug  at 
the  cord,  the  end  of  which  he  had  kept  wrapped  around  his 
wrist!  Something  heavy  was  made  fast  to  the  cord;  two  little 
jerks  notified  him  to  haul  up.  He  had  some  difficulty  in  land- 
ing the  object  over  a  cornice  that  projected  under  his  window. 

The  article  that  he  had  secured  at  expense  of  so  much  trouble 
proved  to  be  a  carafe  of  water  wrapped  in  a  shawl.  The  poor 
young  man,  who  had  been  living  for  so  long  a  time  in  such 
complete  solitude,  covered  the  shawl  with  rapturous  kisses.  But 
words  are  inadequate  to  express  his  emotion  when,  after  so  many 
days  of  vain  waiting,  he  discovered  a  scrap  of  paper  pinned  to 
the  shawl. 

**  Drink  no  water  but  this ;  satisfy  your  hunger  with  choco- 
late,** said  this  precious  missive.  "To-morrow  I  will  try  to  get 
some  bread  to  you;  I  will  mark  the  crust  at  top  and  bottom  with 


MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE  •  l88l 

little  crosses  made  with  ink.  It  is  a  frightful  thing  to  say,  but 
you  must  know  it:  — I  believe  others  are  implicated  in  Barbone's 
design  to  poison  you.  Could  you  not  have  understood  that  the 
subject  you  spoke  of  in  your  letter  in  pencil  is  displeasing  to 
me  ?  I  should  not  think  of  writing  to  you  were  it  not  for  the 
great  peril  that  is  hanging  over  us.  I  have  seen  the  Duchess; 
she  is  well,  as  is  the  Count,  but  she  is  very  thin.  Write  no 
more  on  that  subject  which  you  know  of:  would  you  wish  to 
make  me  angry  ?  ** 

It  cost  Clelia  an  effort  to  write  the  last  sentence  but  one  of 
the  above  note.  It  was  in  everybody's  mouth  in  court  circles 
that  Mme.  Sanseverina  was  manifesting  a  great  deal  of  friendly 
interest  in  Count  Baldi,  that  extremely  handsome  man  and 
quondam  friend  of  the  Marquise  Raversi.  The  one  thing  cer- 
tain was  that  he  and  the  Marquise  had  separated,  and  he  was 
alleged  to  have  behaved  most  shamefully  toward  the  lady  who 
for  six  years  had  been  to  him  a  mother  and  given  him  his  stand- 
ing in  society,     ,     .     , 

The  next  morning,  long  before  the  sun  was  up,  Grillo  entered 
Fabrice's  cell,  laid  down  w^hat  seemed  to  be  a  pretty  heavy  pack- 
age, and  vanished  without  saying  a  word.  The  package  con- 
tained a  good-sized  loaf  of  bread,  plentifully  ornamented  with 
little  crosses  made  with  a  pen.  Fabrice  covered  them  with 
kisses.  Why  ?  Because  he  was  in  love.  Beside  the  loaf  lay  a 
rouleau  incased  in  many  thicknesses  of  paper;  it  contained  six 
thousand  francs  in  sequins.  Finally,  Fabrice  discovered  a  hand- 
some brand-new  prayer-book:  these  words,  in  a  writing  he  was 
beginning  to  be  acquainted  with,  were  written  on  the  fly-leaf:  — 

^'•Poison!  Beware  the  water,  the  wine,  everything;  confine 
yourself  to  chocolate.  Give  the  untasted  dinner  to  the  dog;  it 
will  not  do  to  show  distrust;  the  enemy  would  have  recourse  to 
other  methods.      For  God's  sake,  be  cautious !    no  rashness !  ^^ 

Fabrice  made  haste  to  remove  the  telltale  writing  which  might 
have  compromised  Clelia,  and  to  tear  out  a  number  of  leaves 
from  the  prayer-book,  with  which  he  made  several  alphabets; 
each  letter  was  neatly  formed  with  powdered  charcoal  moistened 
with  wine.  The  alphabets  were  quite  dry  when  at  a  quarter  to 
twelve  Clelia  appeared  at  the  window  of  the  aviary.  ^^  The  main 
thing  now  is  to  persuade  her  to  use  them,^^  said  Fabrice  to  him- 
self. But  as  it  happened,  fortunately,  she  had  much  to  say  to 
the  young  prisoner  in  regard   to  the  plan  to  poison  him  (a  dog 


1 882  MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE 

belonging  to  one  of  the  kitchen-maids  had  died  after  eating  a 
dish  cooked  for  Fabrice),  so  that  CleUa  not  only  made  no  objec- 
tion to  the  use  of  the  alphabets,  but  had  herself  prepared  one 
in  the  highest  style  of  art  with  ink.  Under  this  method,  which 
did  not  work  altogether  smoothly  at  the  beginning,  the  conver- 
sation lasted  an  hour  and  a  half,  which  was  as  long  as  Clelia 
dared  remain  in  the  aviary.  Two  or  three  times,  when  Fabrice 
trespassed  on  forbidden  ground  and  alluded  to  matters  that  were 
taboo,  she   made  no   answer  and  walked  away  to  feed  her   birds. 

Fabrice  requested  that  when  she  sent  him  his  supply  of  water 
at  evening  she  would  accompany  it  with  one  of  her  alphabets, 
which,  being  traced  in  ink,  were  legible  at  a  greater  distance. 
He  did  not  fail  to  write  her  a  good  long  letter,  and  was  careful 
to  put  in  it  no  soft  nonsense  —  at  least,  of  a  nature  to  offend. 

The  next  day,  in  their  alphabetical  conversation,  Clelia  had 
no  reproach  to  make  him.  She  informed  him  that  there  was  less 
to  be  apprehended  from  the  poisoners.  Barbone  had  been  way- 
laid and  nearly  murdered  by  the  lovers  of  the  Governor's  scullery- 
maids;  he  would  scarcely  venture  to  show  his  face  in  the  kitchens 
again.  She  owned  up  to  stealing  a  counter-poison  from  her 
father;  she  sent  it  to  him  with  directions  how  to  use  it,  but  the 
main  thing  was  to  reject  at  once  all  food  that  seemed  to  have  an 
unnatural  taste. 

Clelia  had  subjected  Don  Cesare  to  a  rigorous  examination, 
without  succeeding  in  "discovering  whence  came  the  six  thousand 
francs  received  by  Fabrice.  In  any  case,  it  was  a  good  sign:  it 
showed  that  the  severity  of  his  confinement  was  relaxing. 

The  poison  episode  had  a  very  favorable  effect  on  our  hero's 
amator}^  enterprise:  still,  he  could  never  extort  anything  at  all 
resembling  a  confession  of  love;  but  he  had  the  felicity  of  living 
on  terms  of  intimacy  with  Clelia.  Every  morning,  and  often  at 
evening  also,  there  was  a  long  conversation  with  the  alphabets; 
every  evening  at  nine  o'clock  Clelia  received  a  lengthy  letter,  and 
sometimes  accorded  it  a  few  brief  words  of  answer;  she  sent  him 
the  daily  paper  and  an  occasional  new  book;  finally,  the  rugged 
Grillo  had  been  so  far  tamed  as  to  keep  Fabrice  supplied  with 
bread  and  wine,  which  were  handed  him  daily  by  Clelia's  maid. 
This  led  honest  Grillo  to  conclude  that  the  Governor  was  not  of 
the  same  mind  as  those  who  had  engaged  Barbone  to  poison 
the  young  Monsignor;  at  which  he  rejoiced  exceedingly,  as  did 
his   comrades,    for   there    was   a    saying   current   in   the   prison  — 


MARIE-HENRI   BEYLE 


1883 


**  You  have  only  to  look  Monsignor  del  Dongo  in  the  face ;  he  is 
certain  to  give  you  money.  ^^ 

Fabrice  was  very  pale;  lack  of  exercise  was  injuring  his 
health:  but  for  all  that  he  had  never  been  so  happy.  The  tone  of 
the  conversation  between  Clelia  and  him  was  familiar  and  often 
gay.  The  only  moments  of  the  girl's  life  not  beset  with  dark 
forebodings  and  remorse  were  those  spent  in  conversing  with  him. 
She  was  so  thoughtless  as  to  remark  one  day:  — 

**  I  admire  your  delicacy :  because  I  am  the  Governor's  daugh- 
ter you  have  nothing  to  say  to  me  of  the  pleasures  of  freedom !  '* 

*^  That's  because  I  am  not  so  absurd  as  to  have  aspirations  in 
that  direction,'*  replied  Fabrice.  "How  often  could  I  hope  to 
see  you  if  I  were  hving  in  Parma,  a  free  man  again  ?  And  life 
would  not  be  worth  living  if  I  could  not  tell  you  all  my  thoughts 
—  no,  not  that  exactly:  you  take  precious  good  care  I  don't  tell 
you  all  my  thoughts!  But  in  spite  of  your  cruel  tyranny,  to  live 
without  seeing  you  daily  would  be  a  far  worse  punishment  than 
captivity;  in  all  my  life  I  was  never  so  happy!  Isn't  it  strange 
to  think  happiness  was  awaiting  me  in  a  prison  ?  ** 

<< There  is  a  good  deal  to  be  said  on  that  point,**  rejoined 
Clelia,  with  an  air  that  all  at  once  became  very  serious,  almost 
threatening. 

<*  What !  **  exclaimed  Fabrice,  in  alarm,  "  am  I  in  danger  of 
losing  the  small  place  I  have  won  in  your  heart,  my  sole  joy  in 
this  world  ?  ** 

"  Yes,  **  she  replied.  "  Although  your  reputation  in  society  is 
that  of  a  gentleman  and  gallant  man,  I  have  reason  to  believe 
you  are  not  acting  ingenuously  toward  me.  But  I  don't  wish  to 
discuss  this  matter  to-day.** 

This  strange  exordium  cast  an  element  of  embarrassment  into 
the  conversation,  and  tears  were  often  in  the  eyes  of  both. 

Copyrighted  by  George  H.  Richmond  and  Company. 


i884 


WILLEM   BILDERDIJK 

(1756-1831) 

iiLLEM  Bilderdijk's  personality,  even  more  than  his  genius, 
exerted  so  powerful  an  influence  over  his  time  that  it  has 
been  said  that  to  think  of  a  Dutchman  of  the  late  eighteenth 
and  early  nineteenth  century  was  to  think  of  Bilderdijk.  He  stands 
as  the  representative  of  the  great  literary  and  intellectual  awakening 
which  took  place  in  Holland  imiuediately  after  that  country  became 
part  of  the  French  empire.  The  history  of  literature  has  many  exam- 
ples of  how,  under  political  disturbances,  the  agitated  mind  has 
sought  refuge  in  literary  and  scientific  pursuits,  and  it  seemed  at  that 
time  as  if  Dutch  literature  was  entering  a  new  Golden  Age.  The 
country  had  never  known  better  poets;  but  it  was  the  poetry  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  to  quote  Ten  Brink,  "ceremonious  and  stagy.* 

In  <Herinnering  van  mijne  Kindheit  ^  (Reminiscences  of  M}^  Child- 
hood), a  book  which  is  not  altogether  to  be  relied  upon,  Bilderdijk 
gives  a  charming  picture  of  his  father,  a  physician  in  Amsterdam, 
but  speaks  of  his  mother  in  less  flattering  terms.  He  was  born  in 
Amsterdam  in  1756.  At  an  early  age  he  suffered  an  injury  to  his 
foot,  a  peasant  boy  having  carelessly  stepped  on  it;  attempts  were 
made  to  cure  him  by  continued  bleedings,  and  the  result  was  that 
he  was  confined  to  his  bed  for  twelve  years.  These  years  laid  the 
foundation  of  a  character  lacking  in  power  to  love  and  to  call  forth 
love,  and  developing  into  an  almost  fierce  hypochondria,  full  of  com- 
plaints and  fears  of  death.  In  these  years,  however,  he  acquired  the 
information  and  the  wonderful  power  of  language  which  appear  in 
his  sinewy  verse. 

One  of  his  poems,  dated  1770,  has  been  preserved,  but  is  prin- 
cipally interesting  as  a  first  attempt.  Others,  written  in  his  twentieth 
year,  were  prize  poems,  and  are  suflficiently  characterized  by  their 
titles:  —  <Kunst  wordt  door  Arbeid  verkregen  >  (Art  came  through 
Toil),  and  <  Inloed  der  Dichthunst  op  het  Staets  bestuur  *  (Influence 
of  Poetry  on  Statesmanship).  When  he  went  to  Leyden  in  1780 
to  study  law,  he  was  already  famous.  His  examinations  passed,  he 
settled  at  the  Hague  to  practice,  and  in  1785  married  Katharina 
Rebekka  Woesthoven.  The  following  year  he  published  his  romance, 
<Elius,*  in  seven  songs.  The  romance  ultimately  became  his  favorite 
form  of  verse;  but  this  was  not  the  form  now  called  romance.  It 
was  the   rhymed  narrative   of    the   eighteenth   century,   written   with 


WILLEM   BILDERDIJK  1885 

endless  care  and  reflection,  and  in  his  case  with  so  superior  a  treat- 
ment of  language  that  no  Dutch  poet  since  Huygens  had  approached  it. 
The  year  1795  was  the  turning-point  in  Bilderdijk's  life.  He  had 
been  brought  up  in  unswerving  faith  in  the  cause  of  the  house  of 
Orange,  was  a  fanatic  monarchist  and  Calvinist,  « anti-revolutionary, 
anti-Barneveldtian,  anti-Loevesteinisch,  anti-liberaP^  (thus  Da  Costa), 
a  warm  supporter  of  William  the  Fifth,  and  at  the  entrance  of  the 
French  in  1795  he  refused  to  give  his  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  cause 
of  the  citizens  and  the  sovereignty  of  the  people.  He  was  exiled, 
left  the  Hague,  and  went  to  London,  and  later  to  Brunswick.  This 
was  not  altogether  a  misfortune  for  him,  nor  an  unrelieved  sorrow. 
He  had  been  more  successful  as  poet  than  as  husband  or  financier, 
and  by  his  compulsory  banishment  escaped  his  financial  difficulties 
and  what  he  considered  the  chains  of  his  married  life.  In  London 
Bilderdijk  met  his  countryman  the  painter  Schweikhardt ;  and  with 
this  meeting  begins  a  period  of  his  life  over  which  his  admirers 
would  fain  draw  a  veil.  With  Schweikhardt  were  his  two  daughters, 
of  whom  the  younger,  Katherina  Wilhelmina,  became  Bilderdijk's 
first  pupil,  and,  excepting  his  <*  intellectual  son,»  Isaak  da  Costa, 
probably  his  only  one.  Besides  her  great  poetic  gifts  she  possessed 
beauty  and  charm.  She  fell  in  love  with  her  teacher  and  followed 
him  to  Brunswick,  where  she  lived  in  his  house  under  the  name  of 
Frau  van  Heusden.  In  spite  of  this  arrangement,  the  poet  seems  to 
have  considered  himself  a  most  faithful  husband ;  and  he  did  his  best 
to  persuade  his  wife  to  join  him  with  their  children,  but  naturally 
without  success.  In  1802  the  marriage  was  legally  annulled,  and 
Frau  van  Heusden  took  his  name.  She  did  her  best  to  atone  for  the 
blot  on  her  repute  by  a  self-sacrificing  lovableness,  and  was  in  close 
sympathy  with  Bilderdijk  on  the  intellectual  side.  Like  him  she  was 
familiar  with  all  the  resources  of  the  art  of  poetry.  Most  famous  of 
her  poems  are  the  long  one  <  Rodrigo  de  Goth,*  and  her  touching, 
graceful  <  Gedichten  voor  Kinderen  *  (Poems  for  Children).  Bilderdijk's 
verses  show  what  she  was  to  him:  — 

•    In  the  shadow  of  my  verdure,  firmly  on  my  trunk  depending, 
Grew  the  tender  branch  of  cedar,  never  longing  once  to  leave  me; 
Faithfully  through  rain  and  tempest,  modest  at  my  side  it  rested. 
Bearing  to  my  honor  solely  the  first  twig  it  might  its  own  call; 
Fair  the  wreath  thy  flowers  made  me  for  my  knotted  trunk  fast  withering, 
And  my  soul  with   pride   was   swelling  at  the  crown  of  thy  young  blos- 
soms; 
Straight  and  strong  and  firmly  rooted,  tall  and  green  thy  head  arises, 
Bright  the  glory  of  its  freshness;  never  yet  by  aught  bedimmed. 
Lo!  my  crown  to  thine  now  bending,  only  thine  the  radiant  freshness. 
And  my  soul  finds  rest  and  comfort  in  thy  sheltering  foliage. 


1385  WILLEM   BILDERDIJK 

Meanwhile  he  was  no  better  off  materially.  The  Duke  of  Bruns- 
wick, who  had  known  him  previously,  received  the  famous  Dutch 
exile  with  open  arms,  and  granted  him  a  pension;  but  it  never  suf- 
ficed. Many  efforts  were  made  to  have  his  decree  of  exile  annulled; 
but  they  failed  through  his  own  peevish  insolence  and  his  boundless 
ingratitude.  King  Louis  (Bonaparte)  of  Holland  extended  his  protec- 
tion to  the  dissatisfied  old  poet;  and  all  these  royal  gentlemen  were 
most  generous.  When  the  house  of  Orange  returned  to  Holland,  Will- 
iam I.  continued  the  favor  already  shown  him,  obtained  a  high  pen- 
sion for  him,  and  when  it  proved  insufficient,  supplemented  it  with 
gifts  In  this  way  Bilderdijk's  income  in  the  year  1816  amounted  to 
twenty  thousand  gold  pieces.  That  this  should  be  sufficient  to  keep 
the  wolf  from  the  door  in  a  city  like  Amsterdam,  Bilderdijk  thought 
too  much  to  expect,  and  consequently  left  in  great  indignation  and 
went  to  Leyden  in   18 17. 

But  these  personal  troubles  in  no  way  interfered  with  his  talent. 
On  the  contrary,  the  history  of  literature  has  seldom  known  so 
great  an  activity  and  productiveness;  all  in  all,  his  works  amounted 
to  almost  a  hundred  volumes.  What  he  accomplished  during  his  stay 
in  Germany  was  almost  incredible.  He  gave  lessons  to  exiled  Dutch 
in  a  great  variety  of  branches,  he  saw  volume  upon  volume  through 
print ;  he  wrote  his  famous  *■  Het  Buitenleven  ^  (Country  Life)  after 
Delille,  he  translated  Fingal  after  Ossian,  he  wrote  *  Vaderlandsche 
Orangezucht^  (Patriotic  Love  for  Orange).  After  his  return  to  Hol- 
land he  wrote  <  De  Ziekte  der  Geleerden  ^  (The  Disease  of  Genius : 
18 17),  <  Leyden's  Kamp '  (Leyden's  Battle:  1808),  and  the  first  five 
songs  of  *  De  Ondergang  der  eerste  Wereld  ^  (Destruction  of  the  First 
World:  1809),  probably  his  masterpiece;  moreover,  the  dramas  ^Floris 
V.,^  <Willem  van  Holland,*  and  <Kounak.*  The  volumes  published 
between  181 5  and  18 19  bore  the  double  signature  Willem  and  Wil- 
helmina  Katherina  Bilderdijk. 

But  it  was  as  though  time  had  left  him  behind.  The  younger  Hol- 
land shook  its  head  over  the  old  gentleman  of  the  past  century,  with 
his  antagonism  for  the  poetry  of  the  day  and  his  rage  against  Shake- 
speare and  the  latter's  <<  puerile "  *  King  Lear.  *  For  to  BilderdijTc 
even  more  than  to  Voltaire,  Shakespeare  was  an  abomination.  Then 
in  1830  he  received  the  severest  blow  of  his  life:  Katherina  Wilhel- 
mina  died.  This  happened  in  Haarlem,  whither  he  had  gone  in 
1827.  With  this  calamity  his  strength  was  broken  and  his  life  at  an 
end.     He  followed  her  in   1831. 

He  was  in  every  way  a  son  of  the  eighteenth  century;  he  began 
as  a  didactic  and  patriotic  poet,  and  might  at  first  be  considered  a 
follower  of  Jakob  Cats.  He  became  principally  a  lyric  poet,  but  his 
lyric  knew  no  deep   sentiment,  no   suppressed   feeling;   its  greatness 


WILLEM  BILDERDIJK  1 887 

lay  in  its  rhetorical  power.  His  ode  to  Napoleon  may  therefore  be 
one  of  the  best  to  characterize  his  genius.  When  he  returned  to  his 
native  country  after  eleven  years'  exile,  with  heart  and  mind  full  of 
Holland,  it  was  old  Holland  he  sought  and  did  not  find.  He  did  not 
understand  young  Holland.  In  spite  of  this,  his  fame  and  powerful 
personality  had  an  attraction  for  the  young;  but  it  was  the  attraction 
of  a  past  time,  the  fascination  of  the  glorious  ruin.  Young  Holland 
wanted  freedom,  individual  independence,  and  this  Bilderdijk  con- 
sidered a  misfortune.  <<  One  should  not  let  children,  women,  and 
nations  know  that  they  possess  other  rights  than  those  naturally  theirs. 
This  matter  must  be  a  secret  between  the  prince  and  his  heart  and 
reason,— to  the  masses  it  ought  always  to  be  kept  as  hidden  as  possi- 
ble.»  The  new  age  which  had  made  its  entry  with  the  cry  of  Liberty 
would  not  tolerate  such  sentiments,  and  he  stood  alone,  a  powerful, 
demonic,  but  incomprehensible  spirit. 

Aside  from  his  fame  as  a  poet,  he  deserves  to  be  mentioned  as 
Jacob  Grimm's  correspondent,  as  philologist,  philosopher,  and  theo- 
logian. 

ODE   TO   BEAUTY 

CHILD  of  the  Unborn!   dost  thou  bend 
From  Him  we  in  the  day-beams  see, 
Whose  music  with  the  breeze  doth  blend? — 
To  feel  thy  presence  is  to  be. 
Thou,  our  soul's  brightest  effluence  —  thou 
Who  in  heaven's  light  to  earth  dost  bow, 

A  Spirit  'midst  unspiritual  clods  — 
Beauty!   who  bear'st  the  stamp  profound 
Of  Him  with  all  perfection  crowned, 

Thine  image  — thine  alone — is  God's.     .     .     . 

How  shall  I  catch  a  single  ray 

Thy  glowing  hand  from  nature  wakes  — 
Steal  from  the  ether-waves  of  day 

One  of  the  notes  thy  world-harp  shakes  — 
Escape  that  miserable  joy. 
Which  dust  and  self  with  darkness  cloy. 

Fleeting  and  false  —  and,  like  a  bird. 
Cleave  the  air-path,   and  follow  thee 
•        Through  thine  own  vast  infinity. 

Where  rolls  the  Almighty's  thunder-word  ° 

Perfect  thy  brightness  in  heaven's  sphere. 
Where  thou  dost  vibrate  in  the  bliss 


j8S8  willem  bilderdijk 

Of  anthems  ever  echoing  there! 

That,  that  is  life  —  not  this  —  not  this: 
There  in  the  holy,  holy  row  — 
And  not  on  earth,  so  deep  below  — 

Thy  music  unrepressed  may  speak; 
Stay,  shrouded,  in  that  holy  place :  — 
Enough  that  we  have  seen  thy  face, 

And  kissed  the  smiles  upon  thy  cheek. 

We  stretch  our  eager  hands  to  thee. 

And  for  thine  influence  pray  in  vain; 
The  burden  of  mortality 

Hath  bent  us  'neath  its  heavy  chain ;  — 
And  there  are  fetters  forged  by  art, 
And  science  cold  hath  chilled  the  heart, 
*  And  wrapped  thy  god-like  crown  in  night; 

On  waxen  wings  they  soar  on  high, 
And  when  most  distant  deem  thee  nigh  — 

They  quench  thy  torch,  and  dream  of  light. 

Child  of  the  Unborn!   joy!   for  thou 

Shinest  in  every  heavenly  flame, 
Breathest  in  all  the  winds  that  blow, 

While  self-conviction  speaks  thy  name: 
Oh,  let  one  glance  of  thine  illume 
The  longing  soul  that  bids  thee  come. 

And  make  me  feel  of  heaven,  like  thee! 
Shake  from  thy  torch  one  blazing  drop, 
And  to  my  soul  all  heaven  shall  ope. 

And  I  —  dissolve  in  melody! 

Translated  in  Westminster  Review, 


FROM   THE   <ODE   TO  NAPOLEON  > 

PoKSY,  nay!     Too  long  art  silent! 
Seize  now  the  lute!     Why  dost  thou  tarry? 
Let  sword  the  Universe  inherit. 
Noblest  as  prize  of  war  be  glory. 
•Let  thousand  mouths  sing  hero-actions: 
E'en  so,  the  glory  is  not  tittered. 
Earth-gods  —  an  endless  life,  ambrosial,  * 

Find  they  alone  in  song  enchanting. 

Watch  thou  with  care  thy  heedless  fingers 
Striking  upon  the  lyre  so  godlike; 


WILLEM   BILDERDIJK  1889 

Hold  thou  in  check  thy  lightning-flashes, 
That  where  they  chance  to  fall  are  blighting. 
He  who  on  eagle's  wing  soars  skyward 
Must  at  the  sun's  bright  barrier  tremble. 
Frederic,  though  great  in  royal  throning, 
Well  may  amaze  the  earth,   and  heaven, 
When  clothed  by  thunder  and  the  levin 
Swerves  he  before  the  hero's  fanfare. 

•  •  •  _  •  •  •  • 

Pause  then.  Imagination!     Portals 

Hiding  the  Future,  ope  your  doorways! 

Earth,  the  blood-drenched,  yields  palms  and  olives. 

Sword  that  hath  cleft  on  bone  and  muscle. 

Spear  that  hath  drunk  the  hero's  lifeblood. 

Furrow  the  soil,  as  spade  and  ploughshare. 

Blasts  that  alarm  from  blaring  trumpets 

Laws  of  fair  Peace  anon  shall  herald: 

Heaven's  shame,  at  last,  its  end  attaining. 

Earth,  see,  O  see  your  sceptres  bowing. 
Gone  is  the  eagle  once  majestic, 
On  us  a  cycle  new  is  dawning; 
Look,  from  the  skies  it  hath  descended, 
O  potent  princes,  ye  the  throne-born} 
See  what  Almighty  will  hath  destined. 
Quit  ye  your  seats,  in  low  adoring, 
Set  all  the  earth,  with  you,  a-kneeling; 
Or  —  as  the  free-bom  men  should  perish  — 
Sink  in  grave  with  crown  and  kingdom. 

Glorious  in  lucent  rays,  already 
Brighter  than  gold  a  sceptre  shineth; 
No  warring  realm  shall  dim  its  lustre. 
No  earth-storm  veil  its  blaze  to  dimness. 
Can  it  be  true  that,  centuries  ended, 
God's  endless  realm,  the  Hebrew,  quickens 
Lifting  its  horns  —  though  not  for  always? 
Shines  in  the  East  the  sun,  like  noonday  ? 
Shall  Hagar's  wandering  sons  be  heartened 
After  the  Moslem's  haughty  baiting  ? 

Speed  toward  us,  speed,  O  days  so  joyous  ! 
Even  if  blood  your  cost  be  reckoned  ; 
Speed  as  in  Heaven's  gracious  favor. 
Bringing  again  Heaven's  earthly  kingdom. 


IV— 119 


jSqq  willem  bilderdijk 

Yea,  though  through  waters  deep  we  struggle. 
Joining  in  fight  with  seas  of  troubles, 
Suffer  we,  bear  we  —  hope  —  be  silent! 
On  us  shall  dawn  a  coming  daybreak — 
With  it,  the  world  of  men  be  happy! 

Ti'anslated   in    the   metre   of  the   original,  by  E.    Irenaeus   Stevenson,   for  the 

<  World's  Best  Literature  > 


SLIGHTED    LOVE 
An   Oriental   Romance 

SPLENDID    rose    the    star    of    evening,    and    the    gray    dusk    was 
a-fading. 
O'er  it  with  a  hand  of  mildness,  now  the  Night  her  veil  was 
drawing : 

Abensaid,  valiant  soldier,  from  Medina's  ancient  gateway. 

To  the  meadows,  rich  with  blossoms,  walked   in   darkest  mood  of 
musing  — 

Where   the    Guadalete's   wild  waves   foaming  wander  through   the 
flat  lands. 

Where,  within  the  harbor's  safety,  loves  to  wait  the  weary  seaman. 

Neither  hero's  mood  nor  birth-pride  eased  his  spirit  of  its  suffering 

For   his   youth's   betrothed,  Zobeide;   she   it   was  who   caused   him 
anguish. 

Faithless  had  she  him  forsaken,  she  sometime  his  best-beloved. 

Left  him,  though  already  parted  by  strange  fate,  from  realm  and 
heirship. 

Oh.    that    destiny    he     girds    not  —  strength    it    gave    him,    hero- 
courage, 

Added  to  his  lofty  spirit,  touches  of  nobler  feeling  — 

'Tis    that    she,    ill-starred    one,    leaves    him !    takes    the    hand    so 
wrinkled 

Of  that  old  man,   Seville's  conqueror! 

Into  the  night,  along  the  river,  Abensaid  now  forth  rushes: 

Loudly  to  the  rocky  limits,  Echo  bears  his  lamentations. 

«  Faithless  maid,  more  faithless  art  thou  than  the  sullen  water ! 

Harder  thou   than   even   the    hardened  bosom    of   yon   rigid   rock- 
wall! 

Ah,  bethinkest  thou,  Zobeide,  still  upon  our  solemn  love-oath  ? 

How  thy  heart,  this   hour   so   faithless,  once   belonged   to   me,  me 
only  ? 

Canst  thou  yield  thy  heart,  thy  beauty,  to  that  old  man,  dead  to 
love-thoughts  ? 


WILLEM  BILDERDIJK  1 891 

Wilt  thou  try  to  love  the  tyrant  lacking  love  despite  his  treasure  ? 

Dost  thou  deem  the  sands  of  desert  higher  than  are  virtue  — 
honor  ? 

Allah  grant,  then,  that  he  hate  thee!  That  thou  lovest  yet 
another ! 

That  thou  soon  thyself  surrender  to  the  scorned  one's  bitter  feel- 
ing. 

Rest  may  night  itself  deny  thee,  and  may  day  to  thee  be  terror! 

Be  thy  face  before  thy  husband  as  a  thing  of  nameless  loathing! 

May  his  eye  avoid  thee  ever,   flee  the  splendor  of  thy  beauty! 

May  he  ne'er,  in  gladsome  gathering,  stretch  his  hand  to  thee  for 
partner ! 

Never  gird  himself  with  girdle  which  for  him  thy  hand  em- 
broidered ! 

Let  his  heart,  thy  love  forsaking,  in  another  love  be  fettered; 

The  love-tokens  of  another  may  his  scutcheon  flame  in  battle, 

While  behind  thy  grated  windows  year  by  year,  away  thou 
mournest ! 

To  thy  rival  may  he  offer  prisoners  that  his  hand  has  taken! 

May  the  trophies  of  his  victory  on  his  knees  to  her  be  proffered! 

May  he  hate  thee!  and  thy  heart's  faith  to  him  be  but  thing 
accursed ! 

These  things,  aye  and  more  still!  be  thy  cure  for  all  my  sting 
and  sorrow  !^^ 

Silent  now  goes  Abensaid,  unto  Xeres,  in  the  midnight; 

Dazzling  shone  the  palace,  lighted,  festal  for  the  loathsome  mar- 
riage. 

Richly-robed  Moors  were  standing  'neath  the  shimmer  of  the 
tapers, 

On  the  jiibilant  procession  of  the  marriage-part  proceeded. 

In  the  path  stands  Abensaid,  frowning,  as  the  bridegroom  nears 
him; 

Strikes  the  lance  into  his  bosom,  with  the  rage  of  sharpest  ven- 
geance. 

'Gainst  the  heaven  rings  a  loud  cry,  those  at  hand  their  swords 
are  baring  — 

But  he  rushes  through  the  weapons,  and  in  safety  gains  his  own 
hearth. 

Translation  through  the  German,  in  the  metre  of  the  original,  by  E.  Irenaeus 

Stevenson. 


iJ5q2  willem  bilderdijk 

THE  VILLAGE   SCHOOLMASTER* 
From  <  Country  Life  * 

THERE  he  sits:  his  figure  and  his  rigid  bearing 
Let  us  know  most  clearly  what  is  his  ideal:  — 
Confidence  in  self,  in  his  lofty  standing; 
Thereto  add  conceit  in  his  own  great  value. 
Certain,  he  can  read  —  yes,   and  write  and  cipher, 
In  the  almanac  no  star-group's  a  stranger. 
In  the  church  he,  faithful,  leads  the  pious  chorus, 
Drums  the  catechism  into  young  ones'  noddles. 
Disputation  to  him's  half  the  joy  of  living; 
Even  though  he's  beaten,  he  will  not  give  over. 
Watch  him,  when  he  talks,  in  how  learned  fashion! 
Drags  on  every  word,   spares  no  play  of  muscle. 
Ah,  what  pains  he  takes  to  forget  no  syllable  — 
Consonants  and  vowels  rightly  weighed  and  measured- 
Often  is  he,  too,   of  this  and  that  a  poet! 
Every  case  declines  with  precisest  conscience; 
Knows  the  history  of  Church  and  State,  together  — 
Every  Churchly  light, —  of  pedant-deeds  the  record. 
All  the  village  world  speechless  stands  before  him. 
Asking  <<  How  can  one  brain  be  so  ruled  by  Wisdom?* 
Sharply,  too,  he  looks  down  on  one's  transgressions. 
'Gainst  his  judgment  stern,  tears  and  prayers  avail  not. 
He  appears  —  one  glance  (from  a  god  that  glance  comes!} 
At  a  flash  decides  what  the  youngster's  fate  is. 
At  his  will  a  crowd  runs,   at  his  beck  it  parteth. 
Doth  he  smile?  all  frolic;  doth  he  frown  —  all  cower. 
By  a  tone  he  threatens,  gives  rewards,  metes  justice. 
Absent  though  he  be,  every  pupil  dreads  him, 
For  he  sees,  hears,  knows,  everything  that's  doing. 
On  the  urchin's  forehead  he  can  see  it  written. 
He  divines  who  laughs,  ■  idles,  yawns,  or  chatters, 
Who  plays  tricks  on  others,  or  in  prayer-time's  lazy. 
With  its  shoots,  the  birch-rod  lying  there  beside  him 
Knows  how  all  misdeeds  in  a  trice  are  settled. 
Surely  by  these  traits  you've  our  dorf-Dionysius ! 

*  Compare  Goldsmith's  famous  portrait  in  <The  Deserted  Village.* 

Translation  through  the  German,  in  the  meter  of  the  original,  by  E.  Irenaeus 
Stevenson,  for  the  <  World's  Best  Literature.* 


i893 

BION 

(275  B.  C.)  • 

5F  BiON,  the  second  of  the  Sicilian  idyllists,  of  whom  Theo- 
critus was  the  first  and  Moschus  the  third  and  last,  but  little 
knowledge  and  few  remains  exist.  He  was  born  near 
Smyrna,  says  Suidas;  and  from  the  elegy  on  his  death,  attributed  to 
his  pupil  Moschus,  we  infer  that  he  lived  in  Sicily  and  died  there  of 
poison.  "Say  that  Bion  the  herdsman  is  dead,'*  says  the  threnody, 
appealing  to  the  Sicilian  muses,  "and  that  song  has  died  with  Bion, 
and  the  Dorian  minstrelsy  hath  perished.  .  .  .  Poison  came,  Bion, 
to  thy  mouth.  What  mortal  so  cruel  as  to  mix  poison  for  thee!'*  As 
Theocritus  is  also  ihentioned  in  the  idyl,  Bion  is  supposed  to  have 
been  his  contemporary,   and  to  have  flourished  about  275  B.  C. 

Compared  with  Theocritus,  his  poetry  is  inferior  in  simplicity  and 
naivete,  and  declines  from  the  type  which  Theocritus  had  estab- 
lished for  the  out-door,  open-field  idyl.  With  Bion,  bucolics  first  took 
on  the  air  of  the  study.  Although  at  first  this  art  and  affectation 
were  rarely  discernible,  they  finally  led  to  the  mold  of  brass  in  which 
for  centuries  Italian  and  English  pastorals  were  cast,  and  later  to  the 
complete  devitalizing  which  marks  English  pastoral  poetry  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  with  the  one  exception  of  Allan  Ramsay's  *  Gentle 
Shepherd.*  Theocritus  had  sung  with  genuine  feeling  of  trees  and 
wandering  winds,  of  flowers  and  the  swift  mountain  stream.  His 
poetry  has  atmosphere;  it  is  vital  with  sunlight,  color,  and  the  beauty 
which  is  cool  and  calm  and  true.  Although  Bion's  poems  possess 
elegance  and  sweetness,  and  abound  in  pleasing  imagery,  they  lack 
the  naturalness  of  the  idyls  of  Theocritus.  Reflection  has  crept  into 
them;  they  are  in  fact  love-songs,  with  here  and  there  a  tinge  of 
philosophy. 

The  most  famous  as  well  as  the  most  powerful  and  original  of 
Bion's  poems  remaining  to  us  is  the  threnody  upon  Adonis.  It  was 
doubtless  composed  in  honor  of  the  rites  with  which  Greek  women 
celebrated  certain  Eastern  festivals;  for  the  worship  of  Adonis  still 
lingered  among  them,  mixed  with  certain  Syrian  customs. 

"Thammuz  came  next  behind, 
Whose  annual  wound  in  Lebanon  allured 
The  Syrian  damsels  to  lament  his  fate 
In  amorous  ditties  all  a  summer's  day, 
While  smooth  Adonis  from  his  native  rock 
Ran  purple  to  the  sea,  supposed  with  blood 
Of  Thammuz  yearly  wounded.** 


1894 


BION 


Thammuz  is  identified  with  Adonis.  "  We  came  to  a  fair  large 
river,  >^  writes  an  old  English  traveler,  ^Moubtless  the  ancient  river 
Adonis,  which  at  certain  seasons  of  the  year,  especially  about  the 
feast  of  Adonis,  is  of  a  bloody  color,  which  the  heathens  looked  upon 
as  proceeding  from  a  kind  of  sympathy  in  the  river  for  the  death  of 
Adonis,  who  was  killed  by  a  wild  boar  in  the  mountains  out  of  which 
the  stream  issues.  Something  like  this  we  saw  actually  come  to 
pass;  for  the  water  was  stained  to  a  surprising  redness,  and,  as  we 
observed  in  traveling,  had  discolored  the  sea  a  great  way  into  a  red- 
dish hue,  occasioned  doubtless  by  a  sort  of  minium,  or  red  earth, 
washed  into  the  river  by  the  violence  of  the  rain.^^ 

The  poem  is  colored  by  the  Eastern  nature  of  its  subject,  and  its 
rapidity,  vehemence,  warmth,  and  unrestraint  are  greater  than  the 
strict  canon  of  Greek  art  allows.  It  is  noteworthy,  aside  from  its 
varied  beauties,  because  of  its  fine  abandonmeijt  to  grief  and  its 
appeal  for  recognition  of  the  merits  of  the  dead  youth  it  celebrates. 
Bion's  threnody  has  undoubtedly  become  a  criterion  and  given  the 
form  to  some  of  the  more  famotis  <<  songs  of  tears.  ^*  The  laudatory 
elegy  of  Moschus  for  his  master  —  we  say  of  Moschus,  although 
Ahrens,  in  his  recension,  includes  the  lament  under  <  Incertorum 
Idyllia^  at  the  end  of  <  Moschi  Reliquige  ^ — follows  it  faithfully.  Mil- 
ton in  his  great  ode  of  <  Lycidas  *  does  not  depart  from  the  Greek 
lines;  and  Shelley,  lamenting  Keats  in  his  ^Adonai's,*  reverts  still 
more  closely  to  the  first  master,  adding  perhaps  an  element  of  arti- 
ficiality one  does  not  find  in  other  threnodies.  '  The  broken  and 
extended  form  of  Tennyson's  celebration  of  Arthur  Hallam  takes  it 
out  of  a  comparison  with  the  Greek;  but  the  monody  of  ^Thyrsis,* 
Matthew  Arnold's  commemoration  of  Clough,  approaches  nearer  the 
Greek.  Yet  no  other  lament  has  the  energy  and  rapidity  of  Bion's; 
the  refrain,  the  insistent  repetition  of  the  words  "I  wail  for  Adonis,'* 
—  <<  Alas  for  Cypris !  **  full  of  pathos  and  tmspoken  irrepressible  woe, 
is  used  only  by  his  pupil  Moschus,   thoiigh  hinted  at  by  Milton. 

The  peculiar  rhythm,  the  passion  and  delicate  finish  of  the  song, 
have  attracted  a  number  of  translators,  among  whose  versions  Mrs. 
Browning's  ^  The  Lament  for  Adonis  *  is  considered  the  best.  The 
subjoined  version  in  the  Spenserian  stanza,  by  Anna  C.  Brackett, 
follows  its  moc-^i  closely  in  its  directness  and  fervor  of  expression, 
and  has  moreover  in  itself  genuine  poetic  merit.  The  translation  of 
a  fragment  of  <Hesperos>  is  that  of  J.  A.  vSymonds.  Bion's  fluent  and 
elegant  versification  invites  study,  and  his  few  idyls  and  fragments 
have  at  various  times  been  turned  into  English  by  Fawkes  (to  be 
found  in  Chalmers's  *  Works  of  English  Poets'),  Polwhele,  Banks,  Chap- 
man, and  others. 


BION 


1895 


THRENODY 

I   WEEP  for  Adonai's  • — •  he  is  dead ! 
Dead  Adonais  lies,   and  mourning  all, 
The  Loves  wail  round  his  fair,  low-lying  head. 
O  Cypris,  sleep  no  more !     Let  from  thee  fall 
Thy  purple  vestments  —  hear'st  thou  not  the  call? 
Let  fall  thy  purple  vestments!     Lay  them  by! 

Ah,  smite  thy  bosom,  and  in  sable  pall 
Send  shivering  through  the  air  thy  bitter  cry 
For  Adonais  dead,  while  all  the  Loves  reply. 

I  weep  for  Adonais  —  weep  the  Loves. 

Low  on  the  mountains  beauteous  lies  he  there, 
And  languid  through  his  lips  the  faint  breath  moves. 

And  black  the  blood  creeps  o'er  his  smooth  thigh,  where 

The  boar's  white  tooth  the  whiter  flesh  must  tear. 
Glazed  grow  his  eyes  beneath  the  eyelids  wide ; 

Fades  from  his  lips  the  rose,   and  dies  —  Despair! 
The  clinging  kiss  of  Cypris  at  his  side  — 
Alas,  he  knew  not  that  she  kissed  him  as  he  died! 

I  wail  — responsive  wail  the  Loves  with  me. 

Ah,   cruel,   cruel  is  that  wound  of  thine, 
But  Cypris'  heart-wound  aches  more  bitterly. 

The  Oreads  weep;  thy  faithful  hounds  low  whine; 

But  Cytherea's  unbound  tresses  fine 
Float  on  the  wind;  where  thorns  her  white  feet  wound, 

Along  the  oaken  glades  drops  blood  divine. 
She  calls  her  lover;  he,   all  crimsoned  round 
His  fair  white  breast  with  blood,  hears  not  the  piteous  sound. 

Alas!  for  Cytherea  wail  the  Loves, 

With  the  beloved  dies  her  beauty  too. 
O'  fair  was  she,  the  goddess  borne  of  doves,  ' 

Whilfe  Adonais  lived ;  but  nOw,  so  true 

Her  love,   no  time  her  beauty  can  renew. 
Deeprvoiced  the  mountains  mourn;  the  oaks  reply; 

And  springs  and  rivers  murmur  sorrow  through 
The  passes  where  she  goes,   the  cities  high; 
And  blossoms  flush  with  grief  as  she  goes  desolate  by 

Alas  for  Cytherea!   he  hath  died^— 
The  beauteous'  Adonais.  he  is  dead! 


1896  BION 

And  Echo  sadly  back  "  is  dead  **  replied. 
Alas  for  Cypris!     Stooping  low  her  head, 
And  opening  wide  her  arms,  she  piteous  said, 

*0  stay  a  little,  Adonais  mine! 

Of  all  the  kisses  ours  since  we  were  wed, 

But  one  last  kiss,  oh,  give  me  now,  and  twine 
Thine  arms  close,  till  I  drink  the  latest  breath  of  thine  1 

<<So  will  I  keep  the  kiss  thou  givest  me 
E'en  as  it  were  thyself,  thou  only  best! 

Since  thou,  O  Adonais,  far  dost  flee  — 
Oh,  stay  a  little  —  leave  a  little  rest!  — 
And  thou  wilt  leave  me,  and  wilt  be  the  guest 
Of  proud  Persephone,  more  strong  than  I  ? 
All  beautiful  obeys  her  dread  behest  — 

And  I  a  goddess  am,  and  cannot  die ! 
O  thrice-beloved,  listen!  —  mak'st  thou  no  reply? 

*Then  dies  to  idle  air  my  longing  wild. 

As  dies  a  dream  along  the  paths  of  night; 

And  Cytherea  widowed  is,  exiled 

From  love  itself;   and  now  —  an  idle  sight  — 
The  Loves  sit  in  my  halls,  and  all  delight 

My  charmed  girdle  moves,  is  all  undone ! 

Why  wouldst  thou,  rash  one,  seek  the  maddening  fig'ht' 

Why,  beauteous,  wouldst  thou  not  the  combat  shun  ?  >* — 
Thus  Cytherea  —  and  the  Loves  weep,  all  as  one. 

Alas  for  Cytherea! — he  is  dead. 

Her  hopeless  sorrow  breaks  in  tears,  that  rain 
Down  over  all  the  fair,  beloved  head, — 

Like  summer  showers,  o'er  wind-down-beaten  grain; 

They  flow  as  fast  as  flows  the  crimson  stain 
From  out  the  wound,  deep  in  the  stiffening  thigh; 

And  lo!  in  roses  red  the  blood  blooms  fair, 
And  where  the  tears  divine  have  fallen  close  by, 
Spring  up  anemones,  and  stir  all  tremblingly. 

I  weep  for  Adonais  —  he  is  dead! 

No  more,   O  Cypris,  weep  thy  wooer  here! 
Behold  a  bed  of  leaves!     Lay  down  his  head 

As  if  he  slept  —  as  still,  as  fair,  as  dear, — 

In  softest  garments  let  his  limbs  appear, 
As  when  on  golden  couch  his  sweetest  sleep 

He  slept  the  livelong  night,  thy  heart  anear; 


BION  1897 

Oh,  beautiful  in  death  though  sad  he  keep, 
No  more  to  wake  when  Morning  o'er  the  hills  doth  creep. 

And  over  him  the  freshest  flowers  fling  — 

Ah  me!    all  flowers  are  withered  quite  away 

And  drop  their  petals  wan!    yet,  perfumes  bring 
And  sprinkle  round,  and  sweetest  balsams  lay;  — 
Nay,  perish  perfumes  since  thine  shall  not  stay! 

In  purple  mantle  lies  he,  and  around, 

The  weeping  Loves  his  weapons  disarray, 

His  sandals  loose,  with  water  bathe  his  wound, 
And  fan  him  with  soft  wings  that  move  without  a  sound. 

The  Loves  for  Cytherea  raise  the  wail. 

Hymen  from  quenched  torch  no  light  can  shake. 
His  shredded  wreath  lies  withered  all  and  pale; 

His  joyous  song,  alas,  harsh  discords  break ! 

And  saddest  wail  of  all,  the  Graces  wake : 
"The  beauteous  Adonais!     He  is  dead!^^ 

And  sigh  the  Muses,   "  Stay  but  for  our  sake ! " 
Yet  would  he  come,  Persephone  is  dead;  — 
Cease,  Cypris!     Sad  the  days  repeat  their  faithful  tread! 
Paraphrase  of  Anna  C.   Brackett,  in  Journal  of  Speculative  Philosophy. 


HESPER 

HESPER,  thou  golden  light  of  happy  love, 
Hesper,  thou  holy  pride  of  purple  eve, 
Moon  among  stars,  but  star  beside  the  moon. 
Hail,  friend!    and  since  the  young  moon  sets  to-night 
Too  soon  below  the  mountains,  lend  thy  lamp 
And  guide  me  to  the  shepherd  whom  I  love. 
No  theft  I  purpose ;    no  wayfaring  man 
Belated  would  I  watch  and  make  my  prey: 
Love  is  my  goal ;  and  Love  how  fair  it  is, 
When  friend  meets  friend  sole  in  the  silent  night, 
Thou  knowest,  Hesper! 


1898 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL 

(1850-) 

iHOSE  to  whom  the  discovery  of  a  relishing  new  literary  flavor 
means  the  permanent  annexation  of  a  new  tract  of  enjoy- 
ment have  not  forgotten  what  happened  in  1885.  A  slender 
i6mo  volume  entitled  <  Obiter  Dicta,*  containing  seven  short  literary 
and  biographic  essays,  came  out  in  that  year,  anonymous  and  un- 
heralded, to  make  such  way  as  it  might  among  a  book-whelmed 
generation.  It  had  no  novelty  of  subject  to  help  it  to  a  hearing; 
the  themes  were  largely   the   most   written-out,   in  all   seeming,   that 

could  have  been  selected,  —  a  few  great  or- 
thodox names  on  which  opinion  was  closed 
and  analysis  exhausted.  Browning,  Carlyle, 
Charles  Lamb,  and  John  Henry  Newman 
are  indeed  very  beacons  to  warn  off  the 
sated  bookrnan.  A  paper  on  Benvenuto 
Cellini,  one  on  Actors,  and  one  on  Falstaff 
(by  another  hand)  closed  the  list.  Yet  a 
few  weeks  made  it  the  literary  event  of 
the  day.  Among  epicures  of  good  reading 
the  word  swiftly  passed  along  that  here 
was  a  new  sensation  of  unusually  satisfying 
charm  and  freshness.  It  was  a  tou7-  de  force 
like  the  < Innocents  Abroad,*  a  journey  full 
of  new  sights  over  the  most  staled  and  beaten  of  tracks.  The 
triumph  was  all  the  author's  own. 

Two  years  later  came  another  volume  as  a  ^Second  Series,*  of  the 
same  general  character  but  superior  to  the  first.  Among  the  sub- 
jects of  its  eleven  papers  were  Milton,  Pope,  Johnson,  Burke,  Lamb 
again,  and  Emerson;  with  some  general  essays,  including  that  on 
<  The  Office  of  Literature,*  given  below. 

In  1892  appeared  ^  Res  Judicatae,*  really  a  third  volume  of  the 
same  series,  and  perhaps  even  richer  in  matter  and  more  acute  and 
original  in  thought.  Its  first  two  articles,  prepared  as  lectures  on 
Samuel  Richardson  and  Edward  Gibbon,  are  indeed  his  high-water 
mark  in  both  substance  and  style.  Cowper,  George  Borrow,  Newman 
again,  Lamb  a  third  time  (and  fresh  as  ever),  Hazlitt,  Matthew  Arnold, 
and  Sainte-Beuve  are  brought  in,  and  some  excellent  literary  miscel- 
lanea. 


Augustine  Birrell 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL, 


1899 


A  companion  volume  called  *■  Men,  Wonien,  and  Books  *  is  dis- 
appointing because  composed  wholly  of  short  newspaper  articles: 
Mr.  Birrell's  special  quality  needs  space  to  make  itself  felt.  He 
needs  a  little  time  to  get  up  steam,  a  little  room  to  unpack  his 
wares;  he  is  no  pastel  writer,  who  can  say  his  say  in  a  paragraph 
and  runs  dry  in  two.  Hence  these  snippy  editorials  do  hirri  no 
justice:  he  is  obliged  to  stop  every  time  just  as  he  is  getting  ready 
to  say  something  worth  while.  They  are  his,  and  therefore  readable 
and  judicious;  but  they  give  no  idea  of  his  best  powers. 

He  has  also  written  lives  of  Charlotte  Bronte,  Andrew  Marvel, 
William  Hazlitt,  and  Sir  Francis  Lockwood.  But  he  holds  his  place  in 
criticism  by  the  <Collected  Essays)  of  1900,  supplemented  by  (Mis- 
cellanea) (1901)  and  <In  the  Name  of  the  Bodleian)  (1905)  — volumes 
of  manly,  luminous,  penetrating  essays,  full  of  racy  humor  and  sudden 
wit;  of  a  generous  appreciativeness  that  seeks  always  for  the  vital 
principle  which  gave  the  writer  his  hold  on  men;  still  more,  of  a  warm 
humanity  and  a  sure  instinct  for  all  the  higher  and  finer  things  of  the 
spirit  which  never  fail  to  strike  chords  in  the  heart  as  well  as  the  brain. 
No  writer's  work  leaves  a  better  taste  in  the  mouth;  he  makes  us  think 
better  of  the  world,  of  righteousness,  of  ourselves.  Yet  no  writer  is  less 
of  a  Puritan  or  a  Philistine;  none  writes  with  less  of  pragmatic  purpose 
or  a  less  obtrusive  load  of  positive  fact.  He  scorns  such  overladen 
pedantry,  and  never  loses  a  chance  to  lash  it.  He  tells  us  that  he  has 
((never  been  inside  the  reading-room  of  the  British  Museum,))  and 
((expounds  no  theory  save  the  unworthy  one  that  literature  ought  to 
please.))  He  says  the  one  question  about  a  book  which  is  to  be  part  of 
literature  is,  ((Does  it  read?))  that  ((no  one  is  under  any  obligation  to 
read  any  one  else's  book,))  and  therefore  it  is  a  writer's  business  to  make 
himself  welcome  to  readers;  that  he  does  not  care  whether  an  author 
was  happy  or  not,  he  wants  the  author  to  make  him  happy.  He  puts 
his  theory  in  practice:  he  makes  himself  welcome  as  a  companion  at 
once  stimulating  and  restful,  of  humane  spirit  and  elevated  ideals, 
of  digested  knowledge  and  original  thought,  of  an  insight  which  is 
rarely  other  than  kindly,  and  a  deep  humor  which  never  lapses  into 
cynicism. 

Mr.  Birrell  helps  to  justify  Walter  Bagehot's  dictum  that  the  only 
man  who  can  write  books  well  is  one  who  knows  practical  life  well;  he 
has  been  member  for  Bristol  since  1906  and  was  Chief  Secretary  for 
Ireland  from  1907  to  1916;  but  still  there  are  congruities  in  all  things 
and  one  feels  a  certain  shock  in  finding  that  this  purveyor  of  light 
genial  book-talk  has  written  a  law  book  which  ranks  among 
recognized  legal  authorities.  This  is  a  series  of  lectures  delivered  in 
1896,  and  collected  into  a  volume  on  (The  Duties  and  Liabilities  of 
Trustees.)      But  some   of  the  surprise   vanishes  on  reading  the  book: 


igoo 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL 


even  as  *  Alice  in  Wonderland  >  shows  on  every  page  the  work  of  a 
logician  trained  to  use  words  precisely  and  criticize  their  misuse, 
so  in  exactly  the  opposite  way  this  book  is  full  of  the  shrewd  judg- 
ment, the  knowledge  of  life,  and  even  the  delightful  humor  which 
form  so  much  of  Birrell's  best  equipment  for  a  man  of  letters. 

Mr.  Birrell's  work  is  not  merely  good  reading,  but  is  a  mental 
clarifier  and  tonic.  We  are  much  better  critics  of  other  writers 
through  his  criticisms  on  his  selected  subjects.  After  every  reading 
of  <  Obiter  Dicta  ^  we  feel  ashamed  of  crass  and  petty  prejudice,  in  the 
face  of  his  lessons  in  disregarding  surface  mannerisms  for  the  sake 
of  vital  qualities.  Only  in  one  case  does  he  lose  his  impartiality:  he 
so  objects  to  treating  Emerson  with  fairness  that  he  even  goes  out  of 
his  way  to  berate  his  idol  Matthew  Arnold  for  setting  Emerson  aloft. 
But  what  he  says  of  George  Borrow  is  vastly  more  true  of  himself: 
he  is  one  of  the  writers  we  cannot  afford  to  be  angry  with. 


DR.   JOHNSON 

« /"Criticism,"  writes  Johnson  in  the  6oth  Idler,  *<is  a  study  by 
V_>  which  men  grow  important  and  formidable  at  a  very  small 
expense.  The  power  of  invention  has  been  conferred  by 
nature  upon  few,  and  the  labor  of  learning-  those  sciences  which 
may  by  mere  labor  be  obtained,  is  too  great  to  be  willingly 
endured:  but  every  man  can  exert  such  judgment  as  he  has  upon 
the  works  of  others;  and  he  whom  nature  has  made  weak,  and 
idleness  keeps  ignorant,  may  yet  support  his  vanity  by  the  name 
of  a  critick. '* 

To  proceed  with  our  task  by  the  method  of  comparison  is  to 
pursue  a  course  open  to  grave  objection;  yet  it  is  forced  upon  us 
when  we  find,  as  we  lately  did,  a  writer  in  the  Times  newspaper, 
in  the  course  of  a  not  very  discriminating  review  of  Mr.  Froude's 
recent  voltimes,  casually  remarking,  as  if  it  admitted  of  no  more 
doubt  than  the  day's  price  of  consols,  that  Carlyle  was  a  greater 
man  than  Johnson,  It  is  a  good  thing  to  be  positive.  To  be 
positive  in  your  opinions  and  selfish  in  your  habits  is  the  best 
recipe,  if  not  for  happiness,  at  all  events  for  that  far  more  attain- 
able commodity,  comfort,  with  which  we  are  acquainted.  **A 
noisy  man,^^  sang  poor  Cowper,  who  could  not  bear  anything 
louder  than  the  hissing  of  a  tea-urn,  <^a  noisy  man  is  always  in 
the  right,'*  and  a  positive  man  can  seldom  be  proved  wrong. 
Still,    in   literature   it    is   very   desirable    to    preserve   a   moderate 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL  1 90 1 

measure  of  independence,  and  we  therefore  make  bold  to  ask 
whether  it  is  as  plain  as  the  <*old  hill  of  Howth »  that  Carlyle 
was  a  greater  man  than  Johnson  ?  Is  not  the  precise  contrary 
the  truth  ?  No  abuse  of  Carlyle  need  be  looked  for,  here  or  from 
me.  When  a  man  of  genius  and  of  letters  happens  to  have  any 
striking  virtues,  such  as  purity,  temperance,  honesty,  the  novel 
task  of  dwelling  on  them  has  such  attraction  for  us  that  we  are 
content  to  leave  the  elucidation  of  his  faults  to  his  personal 
friends,  and  to  stern,  unbending  morahsts  like  Mr.  Edmund  Yates 
and  the  World  newspaper.  To  love  Carlyle  is,  thanks  to  Mr. 
Froude's  superhuman  ideal  of  friendship,  a  task  of  much  heroism, 
almost  meriting  a  pension;  still  it  is  quite  possible  for  the  candid 
and  truth -loving  soul.  But  a  greater  than  Johnson  he  most  cer- 
tainly was  not. 

There  is  a  story  in  Boswell  of  an  ancient  beggar-woman  who, 
whilst  asking  an  alms  of  the  Doctor,  described  herself  to  him,  in 
a  lucky  moment  for  her  pocket,  as  "an  old  struggler.>>  Johnson, 
his  biographer  tells  us,  was  visibly  affected.  The  phrase  stuck 
to  his  memory,  and  was  frequently  applied  to  himself.  "  I  too,  '* 
so  he  would  say,  "am  an  old  struggler.^>  So  too,  in  all  con- 
science, was  Carlyle.  The  struggles  of  Johnson  have  long  been 
historical;  those  of  Carlyle  have  just  become  so.  We  are  inter- 
ested in  both.  To  be  indifferent  would  be  inhuman.  Both  men 
had  great  endowments,  tempestuous  natures,  hard  lots.  They 
were  not  amongst  Dame  Fortune's  favorites.  They  had  to  fight 
their  way.  What  they  took  they  took  by  storm.  But — and  here 
is  a  difference  indeed  —  Johnson  came  off  victorious,  Carlyle  did 
not. 

Boswell's  book  is  an  arch  of  triumph,  through  which,  as  we 
read,  we  see  his  hero  passing  into  eternal  fame,  to  take  up  his 
place  with  those  — 

« Dead  but  sceptred  sovereigns  who  still  rule 
Our  spirits  from  their  urns.'* 

Froude's  book  is  a  tomb  over  which  the  lovers  of  Carlyle's  genius 
will  never  cease  to  shed  tender  but  regretful  tears. 

We  doubt  whether  there  is  in  English  literature  a  more  trium- 
phant book  than  Boswell's.  What  materials  for  tragedy  are  want- 
ing ?  Johnson  was  a  man  of  strong  passions,  unbending  spirit, 
violent  temper,  as  poor  as  a  church-mouse,  and  as  proud  as  the 
proudest  of  Church  dignitaries-    endowed  with  the  strength  of  a 


j(j02  AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL 

coal-heaver,  the  courage  of  a  lion,  and  the  tongue  of  Dean  Swift, 
he  could  knock  down  booksellers  and  silence  bargees;  he  was 
melancholy  almost  to  madness,  **  radically  wretched,  '*  indolent, 
blinded,  diseased.  Poverty  was  long  his  portion;  not  that  genteel 
poverty  that  is  sometimes  behindhand  with  its  rent,  but  that 
hungry  poverty  that  does  not  know  where  to  look  for  its  dinner. 
Against  all  these  things  had  this  "old  struggler**  to  contend;  over 
all  these  things  did  this  "  old  struggler  ^*  prevail.  Over  even  the 
fear  of  death,  the  giving  up  of  *^this  intellectual  being,"  which 
had  haunted  his  gloomy  fancy  for  a  lifetime,  he  seems  finally  to 
have  prevailed,   and  to  have  met  his  end  as  a  brave  man  should. 

Carlyle,  writing  to  his  wife,  says,  and  truthfully  enough,  "  The 
more  the  devil  worries  me  the  more  I  wring  him  by  the  nose ;  '* 
but  then  if  the  devil's  was  the  only  nose  that  was  wrung  in  the 
transaction,  why  need  Carlyle  cry  out  so  loud  ?  After  buffeting 
one's  way  through  the  storm-tossed  pages  of  Froude's  ^Carlyle,'— r 
in  which  the  universe  is  stretched  upon  the  rack  because  food 
disagrees  with  man  and  cocks  crow, — with  what  thankfulness  and 
reverence  do  we  read  once  again  the  letter  in  which  Johnson  tells 
Mrs.  Thrale  how  he  has  been  called  to  endure,  not  dyspepsia  or 
sleeplessness,   but  paralysis  itself :  — 

**On  Monday  I  sat  for  my  picture,  and  walked  a  considerable 
way  with  little  inconvenience.  In  the  afternoon  and  evening  I 
felt  myself  light  and  easy,  and  began  to  plan  schemes  of  life. 
Thus  I  went  to  bed,  and  in  a  short  time  waked  and  sat  up,  as 
has  long  been  my  custom;  when  I  felt  a  confusion  in  my  head 
which  lasted,  I  suppose,  about  half  a  minute;  I  was  alarmed,  and 
prayed  God  that  however  much  He  might  afflict  my  body  He 
would  spare  my  understanding.  .  .  .  Soon  after  I  perceived 
that  I  had  suffered  a  paralytic  stroke,  and  that  my  speech  was 
taken  from  me.  I  had  no  pain,  and  so  little  dejection  in  this 
dreadful  state  that  I  wondered  at  my  own  apathy,  and  considered 
that  perhaps  death  itself,  when  it  should  come,  would  excite  less 
horror  than  seems  now  to  attend  it.  In  order  to  rouse  the  vocal 
organs  I  took  two  drams.  ...  I  then  went  to  bed,  and 
strange  as  it  may  seem  I  think  slept.  When  I  saw  light  it  was 
time  I  should  contrive  what  I  should  do.  Though  God  stopped 
my  speech,  He  left  me  my  hand.  I  enjoyed  a  mercy  which  was 
not  granted  to  my  dear  friend  Lawrence,  who  now  perhaps  over- 
looks me  as  I  am  writing,  and  rejoices  that  I  have  what  he 
wanted.     My  first  note  was  necessarily  to  my  servant,  who  came 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL 


1903 


in  talking,  and  could  not  immediately  comprehend  why  he  should 
read  what  I  put  into  his  hands.     .     .  How  this  will  be  received 

by  you   I  know  not.      I   hope  you  will   sympathize   with  me;    but 
perhaps 

«<My  mistress,  gracious,  mild,  and  good. 
Cries  —  Is  he  dumb?     'Tis  time  he  should.* 

*  I  suppose  you  may  wish  to  know  how  my  disease  is  treated 
by  the  physicians.  They  put  a  blister  upon  my  back,  and  two 
from  my  ear  to  my  throat,  one  on  a  side.  The  blister  on  the 
back  has  done  little,  and  those  on  the  throat  have  not  risen.  I 
bullied  and  bounced  (it  sticks  to  our  last  sand),  and  compelled 
the  apothecary  to  make  his  salve  according  to  the  Edinburgh  dis- 
pensatory, that  it  might  adhere  better.  I  have  now  two  on  my 
own  prescription.  They  likewise  give  me  salt  of  hartshorn,  which 
I  take  with  no  great  confidence;  but  I  am  satisfied  that  what  can 
be  done  is  done  for  me.  I  am  almost  ashamed  of  this  querulous 
letter,  but  now  it  is  written  let  it  go. '^ 

This  is  indeed  tonic  and  bark  for  the  mind. 

If,  irritated  by  a  comparison  that  ought  never  to  have  been 
thrust  upon  us,  we  ask  why  it  is  that  the  reader  of  Boswell  finds 
it  as  hard  to  help  loving  Johnson  as  the  reader  of  Froude  finds 
it  hard  to  avoid  disliking  Carlyle,  the  answer  must  be  that  whilst 
the  elder  man  of  letters  was  full  to  overflowing  with  the  milk  of 
human  kindness,  the  younger  one  was  full  to  overflowing  with 
something  not  nearly  so  nice ;  and  that  whilst  Johnson  was  pre- 
eminently a  reasonable  man,  reasonable  in  all  his  demands  and 
expectations,  Carlyle  was  the  most  unreasonable  mortal  that  ever 
exhausted  the  patience  of  nurse,   mother,   or  wife. 

Of  Dr.  Johnson's  affectionate  nature  nobody  has  written  with 
nobler  appreciation  than  Carlyle  himself.  **  Perhaps  it  is  this 
Divine  feeling  of  affection,  throughout  manifested,  that  principally 
attracts  us  to  Johnson.  A  true  brother  of  men  is  he,  and  filial 
lover  of  the  earth.  ^* 

The  day  will  come  when  it  will  be  recognized  that  Carlyle,  as 
a  critic,  is  to  be  judged  by  what  he  himself  corrected  for  the 
press,  and  not  by  splenetic  entries  in  diaries,  or  whimsical  extrava- 
gances in  private  conversation. 

Of  Johnson's  reasonableness  nothing  need  be  said,  except  that 
it  is  patent  everywhere.  His  wife's  judgment  was  a  sound  one  — 
"  He  is  the  most  sensible  man  I  ever  met.  ** 


ipo4  AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL 

As  for  his  brutality,  of  which  at  one  time  we  used  to  hear  a 
great  deal,  we  cannot  say  of  it  what  Hookham  Frere  said  of 
Landor's  immorality,  that  it  was  — 

*<Mere  imaginary  classicality 
Wholly  devoid  of  criminal  reality.** 

It  was  nothing  of  the  sort.  Dialectically  the  great  Doctor  was  a 
great  brute.  The  fact  is,  he  had  so  accustomed  himself  to  wordy 
warfare  that  he  lost  all  sense  of  moral  responsibility,  and  cared 
as  little  for  men's  feelings  as  a  Napoleon  did  for  their  lives. 
When  the  battle  was  over,  the  Doctor  frequently  did  what  no 
soJdier  ever  did  that  I  have  heard  tell  of, —  apologized  to  his 
victims  and  drank  wine  or  lemonade  with  them.  It  must  also  be 
remembered  that  for  the  most  part  his  victims  sought  him  out. 
They  came  to  be  tossed  and  gored.  And  after  all,  are  they  so 
much  to  be  pitied  ?  They  have  our  sympathy,  and  the  Doctor 
has  our  appla.use.  I  am  not  prepared  to  say,  with  the  simpering 
fellow  with  weak  legs  whom  David  Copperfield  met  at  Mr. 
Waterbrook's  dinner-table,  that  I  would  sooner  be  knocked  down 
by  a  man  with  blood  than  picked  up  by  a  man  without  any;  but, 
argumentatively  speaking,  I  think  it  would  be  better  for  a  man's 
reputation  to  be  knocked  down  by  Dr.  Johnson  than  picked  up 
by  Mr.  Froude. 

Johnson's  claim  to  be  the  best  of  our  talkers  cannot,  on  our 
present  materials,  be  contested.  For  the  most  part  we  have  only 
talk  about  other  talkers.  Johnson's  is  matter  of  record.  Carlyle 
no  doubt  was  a  great  talker — no  man  talked  against  talk  or 
broke  silence  to  praise  it  more  eloquently  than  he,  but  unfortu- 
nately none  of  it  is  in  evidence.  All  that  is  given  us  is  a  sort 
of  Commination  Service  writ  large.  We  soon  weary  of  it.  Man 
does  not  live  by  curses  alone. 

An  unhappier  prediction  of  a  boy's  future  was  surely  never 
made  than  that  of  Johnson's  by  his  cousin,  Mr.  Cornelius  Ford, 
who  said  to  the  infant  Samuel,  "  You  will  make  your  way  the 
more  easily  in  the  world  as  you  are  content  to  dispute  no  man's 
claim  to  conversation  excellence,  and  they  will,  therefore,  more 
willingly  allow  your  pretensions  as  a  writer.  **  Unfortunate  Mr. 
Ford!  The  man  never  breathed  whose  claim  to  conversation 
excellence  Dr.  Johnson  did  not  dispute  on  every  possible  occas- 
ion; whilst,  just  because  he  was  admittedly  so  good  a  talker,  his 
pretensions  as  a  writer  have  been  occasionally  slighted. 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL  IOqc 

Johnson's  personal  character  has  generally  been  allowed  to 
stand  high.  It,  however,  has  not  been  submitted  to  recent  tests. 
To  be  the  first  to  "  smell  a  fault "  is  the  pride  of  the  modern 
biographer.  Boswell's  artless  pages  afford  useful  hints  not  lightly 
to  be  disregarded.  During  some  portion  of  Johnson's  married  life 
he  had  lodgings,  first  at  Greenwich,  afterwards  at  Hampstead. 
But  he  did  not  always  go  home  o'  nights;  sometimes  preferring 
to  roam  the  streets  with  that  vulgar  ruffian  Savage,  who  was  cer- 
tainly no  fit  company  for  him.  He  once  actually  quarreled  with 
Tetty,  who,  despite  her  ridiculous  name,  was  a  very  sensible 
woman  with  a  very  sharp  tongue,  and  for  a  season,  like  stars, 
they  dwelt  apart.  Of  the  real  merits  of  this  dispute  we  must 
resign  ourselves  to  ignorance.  The  materials  for  its  discussion  do 
not  exist;  even  Croker  could  not  find  them.  Neither  was  our 
great  moralist  as  sound  as  one  would  have  liked  to  see  him  in 
the  matter  of  the  payment  of  small  debts.  When  he  came  to  die, 
he  remembered  several  of  these  outstanding  accounts;  but  what 
assurance  have  we  that  he-  remembered  them  all  ?  One  sum  of 
;^io  he  sent  across  to  the  honest  fellow  from  whom  he  had 
borrowed  it,  with  an  apology  for  his  delay;  which,  since  it  had 
extended  over  a  period  of  twenty  years,  was  not  superfluous.  I 
wonder  whether  he  ever  repaid  Mr.  Dilly  the  guinea  he  once 
borrowed  of  him  to  give  to  a  very  small  boy  who  had  just 
been  apprenticed  to  a  printer.  If  he  did  not,  it  was  a  great 
shame.  That  he  was  indebted  to  Sir  Joshua  in  a  small  loan  is 
apparent  from  the  fact  that  it  was  one  of  his  three  dying  requests 
to  that  great  man  that  he  should  release  him  from  it,  as,  of 
course,  the  most  amiable  of  painters  did.  The  other  two  requests, 
it  will  be  remembered,  were  to  read  his  Bible,  and  not  to  use  his 
brush  on  Sundays.  The  good  Sir  Joshua  gave  the  desired  prom- 
ises with  a  full  heart,  for  these  two  great  men  loved  one  another; 
but  subsequently  discovered  the  Sabbatical  restriction  not  a  little 
irksome,  and  after  a  while  resumed  his  former  practice,  arguing 
with  himself  that  the  Doctor  really  had  no  business  to  extract 
any  such  promise.  The  point  is  a  nice  one,  and  perhaps  ere  this 
the  two  friends  have  met  and  discussed  it  in  the  Elysian  fields. 
If  so,  I  hope  the  Doctor,  grown  "  angelical,  ^^  kept  his  temper  with 
the  mild  shade  of  Reynolds  better  than  on  the  historical  occasion 
when  he  discussed  with  him  the  question  of  ^'strong  drinks.** 

Against  Garrick,  Johnson  undoubtedly  cherished  a  smoldering 
grudge,  which,  however,  he  never  allowed  any  one  but  himself  to 


1906 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL 


fan  into  flame.  His  pique  was  natural.  Garrick  had  been  his 
pupil  at  Edial,  near  Lichfield;  they  had  come  up  to  town  together 
with  an  easy  united  fortune  of  fourpence  —  "current  coin  o'  the 
realm.  ^^  Garrick  soon  had  the  world  at  his  feet  and  garnered 
golden  grain.  Johnson  became  famous  too,  but  remained  poor 
and  dingy.  Garrick  surrounded  himself  with  what  only  money 
can  buy,  good  pictures  and  rare  books.  Johnson  cared  nothing 
for  pictures  —  how  should  he?  he  could  not  see  them;  but  he  did 
care  a  great  deal  about  books,  and  the  pernickety  little  player 
was  chary  about  lending  his  splendidly  bound  rarities  to  his 
quondam  preceptor.  Our  sympathies  in  this  matter  are  entirely 
with  Garrick;  Johnson  was  one  of  the  best  men  that  ever  lived, 
but  not  to  lend  books  to.  Like  Lady  Slattern,  he  had  a  "  most 
observant  thumb.''  But  Garrick  had  no  real  cause  for  complaint. 
Johnson  may  have  soiled  his  folios  and  sneered  at  his  trade,  but 
in  life  Johnson  loved  Garrick,  and  in  death  embalmed  his  memory 
in  a  sentence  which  can  only  die  with  the  English  language:  —  "I 
am  disappointed  by  that  stroke  of  death  which  has  eclipsed  the 
gayety  of  nations,  and  impoverished  the  public  stock  of  harmless 
pleasure.'* 

Will  it  be  believed  that  puny  critics  have  been  found  to  quarrel 
with  this  colossal  compliment  on  the  poor  pretext  of  its  false- 
hood ?  Garrick's  death,  urge  these  dullards,  could  not  possibly 
have  eclipsed  the  gayety  of  nations,  since  he  had  retired  from  the 
stage  months  previous  to  his  demise.  When  will  mankind  learn 
that  literature  is  one  thing,   and  sworn  testimony  another  ?    .    .    .- 

Johnson  the  author  is  not  always  fairly  treated.  Phrases  are 
convenient  things  to  hand  about,  and  it  is  as  little  the  custom  to 
inquire  into  their  trvith  as  it  is  to  read  the  letterpress  on  bank- 
notes. We  are  content  to  count  bank-notes  and  to  repeat  phrases. 
One  of  these  phrases  is,  that  whilst  everybody  reads  Boswell, 
nobody  reads  Johnson.  The  facts  are  otherwise.  Everybody  does 
not  read  Boswell,  and  a  great  many  people  do  read  Johnson.  If 
it  be  asked.  What  do  the  general  public  know  of  Johnson's  nine 
volumes  octavo?  I  reply,  Beshrew  the  general  public!  What  in 
the  name  of  the  Bodleian  has  the  general  public  got  to  do  with 
literature?  The- general  public  subscribes  to  Mudie,  and  has  its 
intellectual,  like  its  lacteal  sustenance,  sent  round  to  it  in  carts. 
On  Saturdays  these  carts,  laden  with  "  recent  works  in  circula- 
tion," traverse  the  Uxbridge  Road;  on  Wednesdays  they  toil  up 
Highgate   Hill,  and   if   we   may  believe   the  reports  of  travelers,' 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL 


1907 


are  occasionally  seen  rushing  through  the  wilds  of  Camberwell 
and  bumping  over  Blackheath.  It  is  not  a  question  of  the  gen- 
eral public,  but  of  the  lover  of  letters.  Do  Mr.  Browning,  Mr. 
Arnold,  Mr.  Lowell,  Mr.  Trevelyan,  Mr.  Stephen,  Mr.  Morley, 
know  their  Johnson?  "To  doubt  would  be  disloyalty.*  And 
what  these  big  men  know  in  their  big  way,  hundreds  of  little 
men  know  in  their  little  way.  We  have  no  writer  with  a  more 
genuine  literary  flavor  about  him  than  the  great  Cham  of  litera- 
ture. No  man  of  letters  loved  letters  better  than  he.  He  knew 
literature  in  all  its  branches  —  he  had  read  books,  he  haS  written 
books,  he  had  sold  books,  he  had  bought  books,  and  he  had 
borrowed  them.  Sluggish  and  inert  in  all  other  directions,  he 
pranced  through  libraries.  He  loved  a  catalogue;  he  delighted 
in  an  index.  He  was,  to  employ  a  happy  phrase  of  Dr.  Holmes, 
at  home  amongst  books  as  a  stable-boy  is  amongst  horses.  He 
cared  intensely  about  the  future  of  literature  and  the  fate  of 
literary  men.  "I  respect  Millar,"  he  once  exclaimed;  "he  has 
raised  the  price  of  literature.  *  Now  Millar  was  a  Scotchman. 
Even  Home  Tooke  was  not  to  stand  in  the  pillory:  "No,  no, 
the  dog  has  too  much  literature  for  that.*'  The  only  time  the 
author  of  *  Rasselas  *  met  the  author  of  the  *  Wealth  of  Nations  * 
witnessed  a  painful  scene.  The  English  moralist  gave  the  Scotch 
one  the  lie  direct,  and  the  Scotch  moralist  applied  to  the  English 
one  a  phrase  which  would  have  done  discredit  to  the  lips  of  a 
costermonger;  but  this  notwithstanding,  when  Boswell  reported 
that  Adam  Smith  preferred  rhyme  to  blank  verse,  Johnson  hailed 
the  news  as  enthusiastically  as  did  Cedric  the  Saxon  the  English 
origin  of  the  bravest  knights  in  the  retinue  of  the  Norman  king. 
"  Did  Adam  say  that  ?  *'  he  shouted :  "  I  love  him  for  it.  I  could 
hug  him !  *'  Johnson  no  doubt  honestly  believed  he  held  George 
III.  in  reverence,  but  really  he  did  not  care  a  pin's  fee  for  all  the 
crowned  heads  of  Europe.  All  his  reverence  was  reserved  for 
"poor  scholars.*  When  a  small  boy  in  a  wherry,  on  whom  had 
devolved  the  arduous  task  of  rowing  Johnson  and  his  biographer 
across  the  Thames,  said  he  would  give  all  he  had  to  know  about 
the  Argonauts,  the  Doctor  was  much  pleased,  and  gave  him,  or 
got  Boswell  to  give  him,  a  double  fare.  He  was  ever  an  advo- 
cate of  the  spread  of  knowledge  amongst  all  classes  and  both 
sexes.  His  devotion  to  letters  has  received  its  fitting  reward,  the 
love  and  respect  of  all  "lettered  hearts.* 


T908 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL 


THE   OFFICE   OF   LITERATURE 


DR.  John  Brown's  pleasant  story  has  become  well  known,  of 
the  countryman  who,  being  asked  to  account  for  the  grav- 
ity of  his  dog,  replied,  "Oh,  sir!  life  is  full  of  sairiousness 
to  him  —  he  can  just  never  get  eneugh  o'  fechtin'."  Something 
of  the  spirit  of  this  saddened  dog  seems  lately  to  have  entered 
into  the  very  people  who  ought  to  be  freest  from  it, — our  men 
of  letters.  They  are  all  very  serious  and  very  quarrelsome.  To 
some  of  them  it  is  dangerous  even  to  allude.  Many  are  wedded 
to  a  theory  or  period,  and  are  the  most  uxorious  of  husbands  — 
ever  ready  to  resent  an  affront  to  their  lady.  This  devotion 
makes  them  very  grave,  and  possibly  very  happy  after  a  pedantic 
fashion.  One  remembers  what  Hazlitt,  who  was  neither  happy 
nor  pedantic,  has  said  about  pedantry:  — 

"  The  power  of  attaching  an  interest  to  the  most  trifling  or 
painful  piirsuits  is  one  of  the  greatest  happinesses  of  our  nature. 
The  common  soldier  mounts  the  breach  with  joy,  the  miser  de- 
liberately starves  himself  to  death,  the  mathematician  sets  about 
extracting  the  cube-root  with  a  feeling  of  enthusiasm,  and  the 
lawyer  sheds  tears  of  delight  over  ^  Coke  upon  Lyttleton.*  He 
who  is  not  in  some  measure  a  pedant,  though  he  may  be  a  wise, 
cannot  be  a  very  happy  man.'* 

Possibly  not;  but  then  we  are  surely  not  content  that  our 
authors  should  be  pedants  in  order  that  they  may  be  happy  and 
devoted.  As  one  of  the  great  class  for  whose  sole  use  and 
behalf  literature  exists, —  the  class  of  readers, —  I  protest  that  it 
is  to  me  a  matter  of  indifference  whether  an  author  is  happy  or 
not.  I  want  him  to  make  me  happy.  That  is  his  office.  Let 
him  discharge  it. 

I  recognize  in  this  connection  the  corresponding  truth  of 
what  Sydney  Smith  makes  his  Peter  Plymley  say  about  the  pri- 
vate virtues  of  Mr.   Perceval,  the  Prime  Minister:  — 

"  You  spend  a  great  deal  of  ink  about  the  character  of  the 
present  Prime  Minister.  Grant  all  that  you  write — I  say,  I 
fear  that  he  will  ruin  Ireland,  and  pursue  a  line  of  policy  de- 
structive to  the  true  interests  of  his  country;  and  then  you  tell 
me  that  he  is  faithful  to  Mrs.  Perceval  and  kind  to  the  Master 
Percevals,  I  should  prefer  that  he  whipped  his  boys  and  saved 
his  country.** 


AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL  I  pop 

We  should  never  confuse  functions  or  apply  wrong  tests. 
What  can  books  do  for  us  ?  Dr.  Johnson,  the  least  pedantic  of 
men,  put  the  whole  matter  into  a  nut-shell  (a  cocoa-nut  shell, 
if  you  will — Heaven  forbid  that  I  should  seek  to  compress  the 
great  Doctor  within  any  narrower  limits  than  my  metaphor  re- 
quires) when  he  wrote  that  a  book  should  teach  us  either  to 
enjoy  life  or  endure  it.  "  Give  us  enjoyment ! "  "  Teach  us  en- 
durance !  ^*  Hearken  to  the  ceaseless  demand  and  the  perpetual 
prayer  of  an  ever  unsatisfied  and  always  suffering  humanity! 

How  is  a  book  to  answer  the  ceaseless  demand  ? 
.  Self-forgetfulness  is  the  essence  of  enjoyment,  and  the  author 
who  would  confer  pleasure  must  possess  the  art,  or  know  the 
trick,  of  destroying  for  the  time  the  reader's  own  personality. 
Undoubtedly  the  easiest  way  of  doing  this  is  by  the  creation  of 
a  host  of  rival  personalities — hence  the  number  and  the  popu- 
larity of  novels.  Whenever  a  novelist  fails,  his  book  is  said  to 
flag;  that  is,  the  reader  suddenly  (as  in  skating)  comes  bump 
.down  upon  his  own  personality,  and  curses  the  unskillful  author. 
No  lack  of  characters,  and  continual  motion,  is  the  easiest  recipe 
for  a  novel,  which  like  a  beggar  should  always  be  kept  "moving 
on.'*  Nobody  knew  this  better  than  Fielding,  whose  novels,  like 
most  good  ones,  are  full  of  inns. 

When  those  who  are  addicted  to  what  is  called  "  improving 
reading "  inquire  of  you  petulantly  why  you  cannot  find  change 
of  company  and  scene  in  books  of  travel,  you  should  answer 
cautiously  that  when  books  of  travel  are  full  of  inns,  atmosphere, 
and  motion,  they  are  as  good  as  any  novel;  nor  is  there  any  rea- 
son in  the  nature  of  things  why  they  should  not  always  be  so, 
though  experience  proves  the  contrary. 

The  truth  or  falsehood  of  a  book  is  immaterial.  George 
Borrow's  *  Bible  in  Spain  *  is,  I  suppose,  true ;  though  now  that 
I  come  to  think  of  it  in  what  is  to  me  a  new  light,  one  re- 
members that  it  contains  some  odd  things.  But  was  not  Borrow 
the  accredited  agent  of  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  ? 
Did  he  not  travel  (and  he  had  a  free  hand)  at  their  charges  ? 
Was  he  not  befriended  by  our  minister  at  Madrid,  Mr.  Villiers, 
subsequently  Earl  of  Clarendon  in  the  peerage  of  England  ? 
It  must  be  true:  and  yet  at  this  moment  I  would  as  lief 
read  a  chapter  of  the  ^  Bible  in  Spain  >  as  I  would  <  Gil  Bias  * ; 
nay,  I  positively  would  give  the  preference  to  Senor  Giorgio.  No- 
body can  sit  down  to  read  Borrow's  books  without  as  completely 


ipio  AUGUSTINE    BIRRELL 

forgettingf  himself  as  if  he  were  a  boy  in  the  forest  with   Gurth 
and  Wamba. 

Borrow  is  provoking-  and  has  his  full  share  of  faults,  and 
though  the  owner  of  a  style,  is  capable  of  excniciating  offences. 
His  habitual  use  of  the  odious  word  <*  individual "  as  a  noun- 
siibstantive  (seven  times  in  three  pages  of  *■  The  Romany  Rye  ^) 
elicits  the  frequent  groan,  and  he  is  certainly  cnce  guilty  of- 
calling  fish  the  "  finny  tribe.  **  He  believed  himself  to  be  ani- 
mated by  an  intense  hatred  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  and  dis- 
figures many  of  his  pages  by  Lawrence-Boythorn-like  tirades 
against  that  institution;  but  no  Catholic  of  sense  need  on  this 
account  deny  himself  the  pleasure  of  reading-  Borrow,  whose  one 
dominating-  passion  was  camaraderie^  and  who  hob-a-nobbed  in 
the  friendliest  spirit  with  priest  and  gipsy  in  a  fashion  as  far 
beyond  praise  as  it  is  beyond  description  by  any  pen  other  than 
his  own.  Hail  to  thee,  George  Borrow!  Cervantes  himself,  ^  Gil 
Bias,*  do  not  more  effectually  carfy  their  readers  into  the  land  of 
the  Cid  than  does  this  miraculous  agent  of  the  Bible  Society,  by- 
favor  of  whose  pleasantness  we  can,  any  hour  of  the  week,  enter 
Villafranca  by  night,  or  ride  into  Galicia  on  an  Andalusian 
stallion  (which  proved  to  be  a  foolish  thing  to  do),  without  cost- 
ing anybody  a  peseta^  and  at  no  risk  whatever  to  our  necks  — 
be  they  long  or  short. 

Cooks,  warriors,  and  authors  must  be  judged  by  the  effects 
they  produce:  toothsome  dishes,  glorious  victories,  pleasant  books  — 
these  are  our  demands.  We  have  nothing  to  do  with  ingredients, 
tactics,  or  methods.  We  have  no  desire  to  be  admitted  into  the 
kitchen,  the  council,  or  the  study.  '  The  cook  may  clean  her 
saucepans  how  she  pleases  —  the  warrior  place  his  men  as  he 
likes — the  author  handle  his  material  or  weave  his  plot  as  best 
he  can  —  when  the  dish  is  served  we  only  ask.  Is  it  good?  when 
the  battle  has  been  fought,  Who  won  ?  when  the  book  comes  out, 
Does  it  read  ? 

Authors  ought  not  to  be  above  being  reminded  that  it  is 
their  first  duty  to  write  agreeably;  some  very  disagreeable  ones 
have  succeeded  in  doing  so,  and  there  is  therefore  no  need  for 
any  one  to  despair.  Every  author,  be  he  grave  or  gay,  should 
try  to  make  his  book  as  ingratiating  as  possible.  Reading  is  not 
a  duty,  and  has  consequently  no  business  to  be  made  disagree- 
able. Nobody  is  under  any  obligation  to  read  any  other  man's 
book. 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL        |  I91I 

Literature  exists  to  please,— to  lighten  the  burden  of  men's 
lives;  to  make  them  for  a  short  while  forget  their  sorrows  and 
their  sins,  their  silenced  hearths,  their  disappointed  hopes,  their 
grim  futures  —  and  those  men  of  letters  are  the  best  loved  who 
have  best  performed  literature's  truest  office.  Their  name  is 
happily  legion,  and  I  will  conclude  these  disjointed  remarks  by 
quoting  from  one  of  them,  as  honest  a  parson  as  ever  took  tithe 
or  voted  for  the  Tory  candidate,  the  Rev.  George  Crabbe.  Hear 
him  in  ^The  Frank  Courtship^:  — 

«I  must  be  loved, >>  said  Sybil;  «I  must  see 

The  man  in  terrors,   who  aspires  to  me : 

At  my  forbidding  frown  his  heart  must  ache, 

His  tongue  must  falter,  and  his  frame  must  shake; 

And  if  I  grant  him  at  my  feet  to  kneel. 

What  trembling  fearful  pleasure  must  he  feel! 

Nay,   such  the  rapture  that  my  smiles  inspire 

That  reason's  self  must  for  a  time  retire.  >> 

"Alas!  for  good  Josiah,"  said  the  dame, 

« These  wicked  thoughts  would  fill  his  soul  with  shame; 

He  kneel  and  tremble  at  a  thing  of  dust! 

He  cannot,   child:" — the  child  replied,   "He  must.» 

Were  an  office  to  be  opened  for  the  insurance  of  literary 
reputations,  no  critic  at  all  likely  to  be  in  the  society's  service 
would  refuse  the  life  of  a  poet  who  could  write  like  Crabbe. 
Cardinal  Newman,  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen,  Mr.  Swinburne,  are  not 
always  of  the  same  way  of  thinking,  but  all  three  hold  the  one 
true  faith  about  Crabbe. 

But  even  were  Crabbe  now  left  unread,  which  is  very  far  from 
being  the  case,  his  would  be  an  enviable  fame  —  for  was  he  not 
one  of  the  favored  poets  of  Walter  Scott,  and  whenever  the  clos- 
ing scene  of  the  great  magician's  life  is  read  in  the  pages  of 
Lockhart,  must  not  Crabbe 's  name  be  brought  upon  the  reader's 
quivering  lip  ? 

To  soothe  the  sorrow  of  the  soothers  of  sorrow,  to  bring  tears 
to  the  eyes  and  smiles  to  the  cheeks  of  the  lords  of  human 
smiles  and  tears,  is  no  mean  ministry,  and  it  is  Crabbe's. 


I9I2 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL 


TRUTH-HUNTING 


Ts  Truth-hunting   one   of  those  active  mental  habits   which,    as 

1      Bishop  Butler  tells  us,  intensify  their  effects  by  constant  use; 

and  are   weak  convictions,   paralyzed  intellects,   and   laxity   of 

opinions  among-st  the  effects  of  Truth-hunting-  on  the  majority  of 

minds  ?     These  are  not  unimportant  questions. 

Let  us  consider  briefly  the  probable  effects  of  speculative 
habits  on  conduct. 

The  discussion  of  a  question  of  conduct  has  the  great  charm 
of  justifying,  if  indeed  not  requiring,  personal  illustration;  and 
this  particular  question  is  well  illustrated  by  instituting-  a  com- 
parison between  the  life  and  character  of  Charles  Lamb  and  those 
of  some  of  his  distinguished  friends. 

Personal  illustration,  especially  when  it  proceeds  by  way  of 
comparison,  is  always  dangerous,  and  the  dangers  are  doubled 
when  the  subjects  illustrated  and  compared  are  favorite  authors. 
It  behoves  us  to  proceed  warily  in  this  matter.  A  dispute  as  to 
the  respective  merits  of  Gray  and  Collins  has  been  known  to 
result  in  a  visit  to  an  attorney  and  the  revocation  of  a  will.  An 
avowed  inability  to  see  anything-  in  Miss  Austen's  novels  is 
reported  to  have  proved  destructive  of  an  otherwise  good  chance 
of  an  Indian  judgeship.  I  believe,  however,  I  run  no  great  risk 
in  asserting  that,  of  all  English  authors,  Charles  Lamb  is  the  one 
loved  most  warmly  and  emotionally  by  his  admirers,  amongst 
whom  I  reckon  only  those  who  are  as  familiar  with  the  four 
volumes  of  his  *■  Life  and  Letters  ^  as  with  ^  Elia.  ^ 

But  how  does  he  illustrate  the  particular  question  now  enga- 
ging our  attention  ? 

Speaking  of  his  sister  Mary,  who,  as  every  one  knows,  through- 
out *Elia^  is  called  his  cousin  Bridget,  he  says:  — 

<^  It  has  been  the  lot  of  my  cousin,  oftener  perhaps  than  I 
could  have  wished,  to  have  had  for  her  associates  and  mine  free- 
thinkers, leaders  and  disciples  of  novel  philosophies  and  systems; 
but  she  neither  wrangles  with  nor  accepts  their  opinions.'* 

Nor  did  her  brother.  He  lived  his  life  cracking  his  little 
jokes  and  reading  his  great  folios,  neither  wrangling  with  nor 
accepting  the  opinions  of  the  friends  he  loved  to  see  aroimd  him. 
To  a  contemporary  stranger  it  might  well  have  appeared  as  if 
his  life  were  a  frivolous  and  useless  one  as  compared  with  those 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL  ipi^ 

of  these  philosophers  and  thinkers.  They  discussed  their  great 
schemes  and  affected  to  prove  deep  mysteries,  and  were  con- 
stantly asking,  "  What  is  truth  ?  '*  He  sipped  his  glass,  shuffled 
his  cards,  and  was  content  with  the  humbler  inquiry,  <*  What  are 
trumps  ?  '*  But  to  us,  looking  back  upon  that  little  group,  and 
knowing  what  we  now  do  about  each  member  of  it,  no  such  mis- 
take is  possible.  To  us  it  is  plain  beyond  all  question  that,  judged 
by  whatever  standard  of  excellence  it  is  possible  for  any  reason- 
able human  being  to  take,  Lamb  stands  head  and  shoulders  a 
better  man  than  any  of  them.  No  need  to  stop  to  compare  him 
with  Godwin,  or  Hazlitt,  or  Lloyd;  let  us  boldly  put  him  in  the 
scales  with  one  whose  fame  is  in  all  the  churches  —  with  Samuel 
Taylor  Coleridge,   ^^  logician,  metaphysician,  bard.  ^* 

There  are  some  men  whom  to  abuse  is  pleasant.  Coleridge 
is  not  one  of  them.  How  gladly  we  would  love  the  author  of 
*  Christabel  ^  if  we  could !  But  the  thing  is  flatly  impossible. 
His  was  an  unlovely  character.  The  sentence  passed  upon  him 
by  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  (parenthetically,  in  one  of  the  *•  Essays 
in  Criticism^)  —  **Coleridge  had  no  morals ^^ — is  no  less  just  than 
pitiless.  As  we  gather  information  about  him  from  numerous 
quarters,  we  find  it  impossible  to  resist  the  conclusion  that  he 
was  a  man  neglectful  of  restraint,  irresponsive  to  the  claims  of 
those  who  had  every  claim  upon  him,  willing  to  receive,  slow 
to  give. 

In  early  manhood  Coleridge  planned  a  Pantisocracy  where  all 
the  virtues  were  to  thrive.  Lamb  did  something  far  more  diffi- 
cult: he  played  cribbage  every  night  with  his  imbecile  father, 
whose  constant  stream  of  querulous  talk  and  fault-finding  might 
well  have  goaded  a  far  stronger  man  into  practicing  and  justify- 
ing neglect. 

That  Lamb,  with  all  his  admiration  for  Coleridge,  was  well 
aware  of  dangerous  tendencies  in  his  character,  is  made  appar- 
ent by  many  letters,  notably  by  one  written  in  1796,  in  which 
he  says: — 

**  O  my  friend,  cultivate  the  filial  feelings !  and  let  no"  man 
think  himself  released  from  the  kind  charities  of  relationship: 
these  shall  give  him  peace  at  the  last;  these  are  the  best  founda- 
tion for  every  species  of  benevolence.  I  rejoice  to  hear  that  you 
are  reconciled  with  all  your  relations.** 

This  surely  is  as  valuable  an  ^*  aid  to  reflection  **  as  any  sup- 
plied by  the  Highgate  seer. 


I9I4 


AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL 


Lamb  gave  but  little  thoiig-ht  to  the  wonderful  difference  be- 
tween the  "  reason  *>  and  the  "  understanding-.  '*  He  preferred  old 
plays  —  an  odd  diet,  some  may  think,  on  which  to  feed  the  virtues; 
but  however  that  may  be,  the  noble  fact  remains,  that  he,  poor, 
frail  boy!  (for  he  was  no  more,  when  trouble  first  assailed  him) 
stooped  down,  and  without  sigh  or  sign  took  upon  his  own  shoul- 
ders the  whole  burden  of  a  lifelong  sorrow. 

Coleridge  married.  Lamb,  at  the  bidding  of  duty,  remained 
single,  wedding  himself  to  the  sad  fortunes  of  his  father  and 
sister.  Shall  we  pity  him?  No;  he  had  his  reward — the  sur- 
passing reward  that  is  only  within  the  power  of  literature  to 
bestow.  It  was  Lamb,  and  not  Coleridge,  who  wrote  *•  Dream- 
Children  :    a  Reverie  ^ :  — 

<*Then  I  told  how  for  seven  long  years,  in  hope  sometimes, 
sometimes  in  despair,  yet  persisting  ever,  I  courted  the  fair  Alice 

W n;    and  as  much  as  children  could  understand,   I   explained 

to  them  what  coyness  and  difficulty  and  denial  meant  in  mai- 
dens—  when,  suddenly  turning  to  Alice,  the  soul  of  the  first  Alice 
looked  out  at  her  eyes  with  such  a  reality  of  representment  that 
I  became  in  doubt  which  of  them  stood  before  me,  or  whose  that 
bright  hair  was;  and  while  I  stood  gazing,  both  the  children 
gradually  grew  fainter  to  my  view,  receding  and  still  receding, 
till  nothing  at  last  but  two  mournful  features  were  seen  in  the 
uttermost  distance,  which,  without  speech,  strangely  impressed 
upon  me  the  effects  of  speech.  <We  are  not  of  Alice  nor  of 
thee,  nor  are  we  children  at  all.  The  children  of  Alice  call 
Bartrum  father.  We  are  nothing,  less  than  nothing,  and  dreams. 
We  are  only   w/iat  migJit  have  been.  ^  ^^ 

Godwin !  Hazlitt !  Coleridge !  Where  now  are  their  <<  novel 
philosophies  and  systems "  ?  Bottled  moonshine,  which  does  7iot 
improve  by  keeping. 

"  Only  the  actions  of  the  just 
Smell  sweet  and  blossom  in  the  dust.'* 

W'ere  we  disposed  to  admit  that  Lamb  would  in  all  proba- 
bility have  been  as  good  a  man  as  every  one  agrees  he  was  — 
as  kind  to  his  father,  as  full  of  self-sacrifice  for  the  sake  of  his 
sister,  as  loving  and  ready  a  friend  —  even  though  he  had  paid 
more  heed  to  current  speculations,  it  is  yet  not  without  use 
in  a  time  like  this,  when  so  much  stress  is  laid  upon  anxious 
inquiry   into   the   mysteries   of   soul   and  body,  to  point  out  how 


AUGUSTINE    BIRRELL 


1915 


this  man  attained  to  a  moral  excellence  denied  to  his  speculative 
contemporaries;  performed  duties  from  which  they,  good  men  as 
they  were,  would  one  and  all  have  shrunk;  how,  in  short,  he 
contrived  to  achieve  what  no  one  of  his  friends,  not  even  the 
immaculate  Wordsworth  or  the  precise  Sou  they,  achieved  —  the 
living  of  a  life  the  records  of  which  are  inspiriting  to  read,  and 
are  indeed  **  the  presence  of  a  good  diffused  *^ ;  and  managed  to 
do  it  all  without  either  *< wrangling  with  or  accepting"  the  opin- 
ions that  "hurtled  in  the  air"  about  him. 


BENVENUTO   CELLINI 
From  <  Obiter  Dicta  > 

WHAT  a  liar  was  Benvenuto  Cellini!  —  who  can  believe  a  word 
he  says  ?  To  hang  a  dog  on  his  oath  would  be  a  judi- 
cial murder.  Yet  when  we  lay  down  his  Memoirs  and 
let  our  thoughts  travel  back  to  those  far-off  days  he  tells  us  of, 
there  we  see  him  standing,  in  bold  relief,  against  the  black  sky 
of  the  past,  the  very  man  he  was.  Not  more  surely  did  he,  with 
that  rare  skill  of  his,  stamp  the  image  of  Clement  VII.  on  the 
papal  currency,  than  he  did  the  impress  of  his  own  singular  per- 
sonality upon  every  word  he  spoke  and  every  sentence  he  wrote. 

We  ought,  of  course,  to  hate  him,  but  do  we  ?  A  murderer 
he  has  written  himself  down.  A  liar  he  stands  self-convicted  of 
being.  Were  any  one  in  the  nether  world  bold  enough  to  call 
him  thief,  it  may  be  doubted  whether  Rhadamanthus  would 
award  him  the  damages  for  which  we  may  be  certain  he  would 
loudly  clamor.     Why  do  we  not  hate  him?     Listen  to  him:  — 

"  Upon  my  uttering  these  words,  there  was  a  general  outcry, 
the  noblemen  affirming  that  I  promised  too  much.  But  one  of 
them,  who  was  a  great  philosopher,  said  in  my  favor,  ^  From  the 
admirable  symmetry  of  shape  and  happy  physiognomy  of  this 
young  man,  I  venture  to  engage  that  he  will  perform  all  he 
promises,  and  more.  ^  The  Pope  replied,  *■  I  am  of  the  same 
opinion;^  then  calling  Trajano,  his  gentleman  of  the  bedchamber, 
he  ordered  him  to  fetch  me  five  hundred  ducats." 

And  so  it  always  ended:  suspicions,  aroused  most  reasonably, 
allayed  most  unreasonably,  and  then  —  ducats.  He  deserved  hang- 
ing, but  he  died  in  his  bed.  He  wrote  his  own  memoirs  after  a 
fashion  that  ought  to  have  brought  posthumous  justice  upon  him. 


igi6 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL 


and  made  them  a  literary  gibbet,  on  which  he  should  swing,  a 
creaking  horror,  for  all  time;  but  nothing  of  the  sort  has  hap- 
pened. The  rascal  is  so  symmetrical,  and  his  physiognomy,  as  it 
gleams  upon  us  through  the  centuries,  so  happy,  that  we  cannot 
withhold  our  ducats,  though  we  may  accompany  the  gift  with  a 
shower  of  abuse. 

This  only  proves  the  profundity  of  an  observation  made  by 
Mr.  Bagehot  —  a  man  who  carried  away  into  the  next  world  more 
originality  of  thought  than  is  now  to  be  found  in  the  Three 
Estates  of  the  Realm.  Whilst  remarking  upon  the  extraordinary 
reputation  of  the  late  Francis  Homer  and  the  trifling  cost  he 
was  put  to  in  supporting  it,  Mr.  Bagehot  said  that  it  proved  the 
advantage  of  "keeping  an  atmosphere.** 

The  common  air  of  heaven  sharpens  men's  judgments.  Poor 
Horner,  but  for  that  kept  atmosphere  of  his  always  surrounding 
him,  would  have  been  bluntly  asked  "  what  he  had  done  since  he 
was  breeched,'*  and  in  reply  he  could  only  have  muttered  some- 
thing about  the  currency.  As  for  our  special  rogue  Cellini,  the 
question  would  probably  have  assumed  this  shape :  "  Rascal,  name 
the  crime  you  have  not  committed,  and  account  for  the  omission.** 

But  these  awkward  questions  are  not  put  to  the  lucky  people 
who  keep  their  own  atmospheres.  The  critics,  before  they  can 
get  at  them,  have  to  step  out  of  the  every-day  air,  where  only 
achievements  count  and  the  Decalogue  still  goes  for  something, 
into  the  kept  atmosphere,  which  they  have  no  sooner  breathed 
than  they  begin  to  see  things  differently,  and  to  measure  the 
object  thus  surrounded  with  a  tape  of  its  own  manufacture. 
Horner  —  poor,  ugly,  a  man  neither  of  words  nor  deeds — be- 
comes one  of  our  great  men ;  a  nation  mourns  his  loss  and 
erects  his  statue  in  the  Abbey.  Mr.  Bagehot  gives  several 
instances  of  the  same  kind,  but  he  does  not  mention  Cellini, 
who  is  however  in  his  own  way  an  admirable  example. 

You  open  his  book  —  a  Pharisee  of  the  Pharisees.  Lying, 
indeed!  Why,  you  hate  prevarication.  As  for  murder,  your 
friends  know  you  too  well  to  mention  the  subject  in  your  hear- 
ing, except  in  immediate  connection  with  capital  punishment. 
You  are  of  course  willing  to  make  some  allowance  for  Cellini's 
time  and  place  —  the  first  half  of  the  sixteenth  century  and 
Italy!  "Yes,**  you  remark,  "Cellini  shall  have  strict  justice  at 
my  hands.**  So  you  say  as  you  settle  yourself  in  your  chair  and 
begin    to    read.     We    seem    to    hear    the    rascal    laughing    in   his 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL 


I917 


gfrave.  His  spirit  breathes  upon  you  from  his  book  —  peeps  at 
you  roguishly  as  you  turn  the  pages.  His  atmosphere  surrounds 
you;  you  smile  when  you  ought  to  frown,  chuckle  when  you 
should  groan,  and  —  oh,  final  triumph!  —  laugh  aloud  when,  if  you 
had  a  rag  of  principle  left,  you  would  fling  the  book  into  the 
fire.  Your  poor  moral  sense  turns  away  with  a  sigh,  and 
patiently   awaits    the    conclusion    of   the    second   volume. 

How  cautiously  does  he  begin,  how  gently  does  he  win  your 
ear  by  his  seductive  piety!  I  quote  from  Mr.  Roscoe's  transla- 
tion:— 

"  It  is  a  duty  incumbent  on  upright  and  credible  men  of  all 
ranks,  who  have  performed  anything  noble  or  praiseworthy,  to 
record,  in  their  own  writing,  the  events  of  their  lives;  yet  they 
should  not  commence  this  honorable  task  before  they  have  passed 
their  fortieth  year.  Such  at  least  is  my  opinion  now  that  I  have 
completed  my  fifty-eighth  year,  and  am  settled  in  Florence, 
where,  considering  the  numerous  ills  that  constantly  attend 
human  life,  I  perceive  that  I  have  never  before  been  so  free 
from  vexations  and  calamities,  or  possessed  of  so  great  a  share 
of  content  and  health  as  at  this  period.  Looking  back  on  some 
delightful  and  happy  events  of  my  life,  and  on  many  misfortunes 
so  truly  overwhelming  that  the  appalling  retrospect  makes  me 
wonder  how  I  have  reached  this  age  in  vigor  and  prosperity, 
through  God's  goodness  I  have  resolved  to  publish  an  account  of 
my  life;  and  ...  I  must,  in  commencing  my  narrative, 
satisfy  the  public  on  some  few  points  to  which  its  curiosity  is 
usually  directed;  the  first  of  which  is  to  ascertain  whether  a  man 
is  descended  from  a  virtuous  and  ancient  family.  ...  I  shall 
therefore  now  proceed  to  inform  the  reader  how  it  pleased  God 
that  I  should  come  into  the  world.'* 

So  you  read  on  page  i ;  what  you  read  on  page  1 9 1  is  this :  — 

^*  Just  after  sunset,  about  eight  o'clock,  as  this  musqueteer 
stood  at  his  door  with  his  sword  in  his  hand,  when  he  had  done 
supper,  I  with  great  address  came  close  up  to  him  with  a  long 
dagger,  and  gave  him  a  violent  back-handed  stroke,  which  I 
aimed  at  his  neck.  He  instantly  turned  round,  and  the  blow, 
falling  directly  upon  his  left  shoulder,  broke  the  whole  bone  of 
it;  upon  which  he  dropped  his  sword,  quite  overcome  by  the 
pain,  and  took  to  his  heels.  I  pursued,  and  in  four  steps  came 
up  with  him,  when,  raising  the  dagger  over  his  head,  which  he 
lowered   down,    I   hit  him   exactly   upon   the   nape  of  the  neck. 


I9I8 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL 


The  weapon  penetrated  so  deep  that,  though  I  made  a  great 
effort  to  recover  it  again,   I  found  it  impossible.  ^^ 

So  much  for  murder.  Now  for  manslaughter,  or  rather  Cel- 
lini's notion  of  manslai:ghter. 

"  Pompeo  entered  an  apothecary's  shop  at  the  corner  of  the 
Chiavica,  about  some  business,  and  stayed  there  for  some  time. 
I  was  told  he  had  boasted  of  having  bullied  me,  but  it  turned 
out  a  fatal  adventure  to  him.  Jiist  as  I  arrived  at  that  quarter 
he  was  coming  out  of  the  shop,  and  his  bravoes,  having  made  an 
opening,  formed  a  circle  round  him.  I  thereupon  clapped  my 
hand  to  a  sharp  dagger,  and  having  forced  my  way  through 
the  file  of  ruffians,  laid  hold  of  him  by  the  throat,  so  quickly 
and  with  such  presence  of  mind  that  there  was  not  one  of  his 
friends  could  defend  him.  I  pulled  him  towards  me  to  give 
him  a  blow  in  front,  but  he  turned  his  face  about  through 
excess  of  terror,  so  that  I  wounded  him  exactly  under  the  ear; 
and  upon  repeating  my  blow,  he  fell  down  dead.  It  had  never 
been  my  intention  to  kill  him,  but  blows  are  not  always  under 
command.  '^ 

We  must  all  feel  that  it  would  never  have  done  to  have 
begun  with  these  passages;  but  long  before  the  191st  page  has 
been  reached,  Cellini  has  retreated  into  his  own  atmosphere,  and 
the  scales  of  justice  have  been  hopelessly  tampered  with. 

That  such  a  man  as  this  encountered  suffering  in  the  course 
of  his  life  should  be  matter  for  satisfaction  to  every  well-regu- 
lated mind;  but  somehow  or  other,  you  find  yourself  pitying 
the  fellow  as  he  narrates  the  hardships  he  endured  in  the  Castle 
of  St.  Angelo.  He  is  so  symmetrical  a  rascal!  Just  hear  him! 
listen  to  what  he  says  well  on  in  the  second  volume,  after  the 
little  incidents  already  quoted;  — 

"  Having  at  length  recovered  my  strength  and  vigor,  after  I 
had  composed  myself  and  resumed  my  cheerfulness  of  mind,  I 
continued  to  read  my  Bible,  and  so  accustomed  my  eyes  to  that 
darkness,  that  though  I  was  at  first  able  to  read  only  an  hour 
and  a  half,  I  could  at  length  read  three  hours.  I  then  reflected 
on  the  wonderful  power  of  the  Almighty  upon  the  hearts  of 
simple  men,  who  had  carried  their  enthusiasm  so  far  as  to  believe 
firmly  that  God  would  indulge  them  in  all  they  wished  for;  and 
I  promised  myself  the  assistance  of  the  Most  High,  as  well 
through  His  mercy  as  on  account  of  my  innocence.  Thus  turn- 
ing constantly  to  the  Supreme  Being,  sometimes  in  prayer,  some- 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL  I^ig 

times  in  silent  meditation  on  the  divine  goodness,  I  was  totally 
engrossed  by  these  heavenly  refections,  and  came  to  take  such 
delight  in  pious  meditations  that  I  no  longer  thought  of  past 
misfortunes.  On  the  contrary,  I  was  all  day  long  singing  psalms 
and  many  other  compositions  of  mine,  in  which  I  celebrated  and 
praised  the  Deity. -^^ 

Thus  torn  fiom  their  context,  these  passages  may  seem  to 
supply  the  best  possible  falsification  of  the  previous  statement 
that  Cellini  told  the  truth  about  himself.  Judged  by  these  pass- 
ages alone,  he  may  appear  a  hypocrite  of  an  unusually  odious 
description.  But  it  is  only  necessary  to  read  his  book  to  dispel 
that  notion.  He  tells  lies  about  other  people;  he  repeats  long 
conversations,  sounding  his  own  praises,  during  which,  as  his 
own  narrative  shows,  he  was  not  present;  he  exaggerates  his  own 
exploits,  his  sufferings  —  even,  it  may  be,  his  crimes:  but  when 
we  lay  down  his  book,  we  feel  we  are  saying  good-by  to  a  man 
whom  we  know. 

He  has  introduced  himself  to  us,  and  though  doubtless  we 
prefer  saints  to  sinners,  we  may  be  forgiven  for  liking  the  com- 
pany of  a  live  rogue  better  than  that  of  the  lay-figures  and 
empty  clock-cases  labeled  with  distinguished  names,  who  are  to 
be  found  doing  duty  for  men  in  the  works  of  our  standard  his- 
torians. What  would  we  not  give  to  know  Julius  Caesar  one- 
half  as  well  as  we  know  this  outrageous  rascal  ?  The  saints  of 
the  earth,  too,  how  shadowy  they  are!  Which  of  them  do  we 
really  know  ?  Excepting  one  or  two  ancient  and  modern  Quiet- 
ists,  there  is  hardly  one  amongst  the  whole  number  who  being 
dead  yet  speaketh.  Their  memoirs  far  too  often  only  reveal  to 
us  a  hazy  something,  certainly  not  recognizable  as  a  man.  This 
is  generally  the  fault  of  their  editors,  who,  though  -men  them- 
selves, confine  their  editorial  duties  to  going  up  and  down  the 
diaries  and  papers  of  the  departed  saint,  and  obliterating  all 
human  touches.  This  they  do  for  the  "better  prevention  of 
scandals*^;  and  one  cannot  deny  that  they  attain  their  end,  though 
they  pay  dearly  for  it. 

I  shall  never  forget  the  start  I  gave  when,  on  reading  some 
old  book  about  India,  I  came  across  an  after-dinner  jest  of 
Henry  Martyn's.  The  thought  of  Henry  Martyn  laughing  over 
the  walnuts  and  the  wine  was  almost,  as  Robert  Browning's  un- 
known painter  says,  "too  wildly  dear;*  and  to  this  day  I  cannot 
help  thinking  that  there  must  be  a  mistake  somewhere. 


1920 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL 


To  return  to  Cellini,  and  to  conclude.  On  laying-  down  his 
Memoirs,  let  us  be  careful  to  recall  our  banished  moral  sense, 
and  make  peace  with  her,  by  passing  a  final  judgment  on  this 
desperate  sinner;  which  perhaps  after  all,  we  cannot  do  better 
than  by  employing  language  of  his  own  concerning  a  monk,  a 
fellow-prisoner  of  his,  who  never,  so  far  as  appears,  murdered 
anybody,  but  of  whom  Cellini  none  the  less  felt  himself  entitled 
to  say:  — 

«I  admired  his  shining-  qualities,  but  his  odious  vices  I  freely 
censured  and  held  in  abhorrence.** 


ON   THE   ALLEGED   OBSCURITY   OF   MR.    BROWNING'S    POETRY 

From  <  Obiter  Dicta  > 

IN  considering-  whether  a  poet  is  intelligible  and  lucid,  we 
ought  not  to  grope  and  grub  about  his  work  in  search  of 
obscurities  and  oddities,  but  should,  in  the  first  instance 
at  all  events,  attempt  to  regard  his  whole  scope  and  range;  to 
form  some  estimate,  if  we  can,  of  his  general  purport  and 
effect,  asking  ourselves  for  this  purpose  such  questions  as  these: 
■ — How  are  we  the  better  for  him?  Has  he  quickened  any 
passion,  lightened  any  burden,  purified  any  taste  ?  Does  he 
play  any  real  part  in  our  lives  ?  When  we  are  in  love,  do  we 
whisper  him  in  our  lady's  ear  ?  When  we  sorrow,  does  he  ease 
our  pain  ?  Can  he  calm  the  strife  of  mental  conflict  ?  Has  he 
had  anything  to  say  which  wasn't  twaddle  on  those  subjects 
which,  elude  analysis  as  they  may,  and  defy  demonstration  as 
they  do,   are  yet  alone  of  perennial  interest  — 

«  On  man,  on  nature,  and  on  human  life,» 

on  the  pathos  of  our  situation,  looking  back  on  to  the  irrevo- 
cable and  forward  to  the  unknown  ?  If  a  poet  has  said,  or) 
done,  or  been  any  of  these  things  to  an  appreciable  extent,  to 
charge  him  with  obscurity  is  both  folly  and  ingratitude. 

But  the  subject  may  be  pursued  further,  and  one  may  be 
called  upon  to  investigate  this  charge  with  reference  to  partic- 
ular books  or  poems.  In  Browning's  case  this  fairly  may  be 
done;  and  then  another  crop  of  questions  arises,  such  as:  What 
is   the   book    about,  /.    <?.,   with    what    subject   does   it   deal     and 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL  1^21 

what  method  of  dealing  does  it  employ  ?  Is  it  didactical,  analyt- 
ical, or  purely  narrative  ?  Is  it  content  to  describe,  or  does  it 
aspire  to  explain  ?  In  common  fairness  these  questions  must  be 
asked  and  answered,  before  we  heave  our  critical  half-bricks  at 
strange  poets.  One  task  is  of  necessity  more  difficult  than 
another.  Students  of  geometry  who  have  pushed  their  re- 
searches into  that  fascinating  science  so  far  as  the  fifth  proposi- 
tion of  the  first  book,  commonly  called  the  *  Pons  Asinorum  * 
(though  now  that  so  many  ladies  read  Euclid,  it  ought,  in  com- 
mon justice  to  them,  to  be  at  least  sometimes  called  the  /  Pons 
Asinarum^),  will  agree  that  though  it  may  be  more  difficult  to 
prove  that  the  angles  at  the  base  of  an  isosceles  triangle  are 
equal,  and  that  if  the  equal  sides  be  produced,  the  angles  on 
the  other  side  of  the  base  shall  be  equal,  than  it  was  to  describe 
an  equilateral  triangle  on  a  given  finite  straight  line;  yet  no 
one  but  an  ass  would  say  that  the  fifth  proposition  was  one  whit 
less  intelligible  than  the  first.  When  we  consider  Mr.  Browning 
in  his  later  writings,  it  will  be  useful  to  bear  this  distinction  in 
mind.     ... 

Looking  then  at  the  first  period,  we  find  in  its  front  eight 
plays : — 

1.  <  Strafford,*  written  in  1836,  when  its  author  was  twenty- 
four  years  old,  and  put  upon  the  boards  of  Covent  Garden 
Theatre  on  the  ist  of  May,  1837;  Macready  playing  Strafford, 
and  Miss  Helen  Faucit  Lady  Carlisle.  It  was  received  with  much 
enthusiasm,  but  the  company  was  rebellious  and  the  manager 
bankrupt;  and  after  running  five  nights,  the  man  who  played 
Pym  threw  up  his  part,  and  the  theatre  was  closed. 

2.  *Pippa  Passes.* 

3.  *  King  Victor  and  King  Charles.* 

4.  ^The  Return  of  the  Druses.* 

5.  ^A  Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon.* 

This  beautiful  and  pathetic  play  was  put  on  the  stage  of 
Drury  Lane  on  the  nth  of  February,  1843,  with  Phelps  as  Lord 
Tresham,  Miss  Helen  Faucit  as  Mildred  Tresham,  and  Mrs.  Stir- 
ling, still  known  to  us  all,  as  Guendolen.  It  was  a  brilliant 
success.  Mr.  Browning  was  in  the  stage-box;  and  if  it  is  any 
satisfaction  for  a  poet  to  hear  a  crowded  house  cry  ^^  Author, 
author !  **  that  satisfaction  has  belonged  to  Mr.  Browning.  The 
play  ran  several  nights;  and  was  only  stopped  because  one  of 
Mr,  Macready's  bankruptcies  happened  just  then  to  intervene.     It 


I02  2  AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL 

was    afterwards   revived   by    Mr.   Phelps,  during  his  ^*  memorable 
management  **  of  Sadlers'  Wells. 

6.  'Colombe's    Birthday.^     Miss   Helen   Faucit  put  this  upon 
the  stage  in  1852,  when  it  was  reckoned  a  success. 

7.  <Luria.  ^ 

8.  <A  Soul's  Tragedy.^ 

To    call    any  of    these    plays    unintelligible    is    ridiculous;    and 
nobody  who  has  ever  read   them  ever  did,  and  why  people   who 
have  not  read  them   should  abuse    them    is   hard   to    see.     Were 
society  put  upon  its  oath,    we   should   be  surprised    to    find    how 
many  people  in  high  places  have  not  read  *  All's  Well  that  Ends 
Well,^    or    *Timon  of  Athens^;    but    they    don't  go   about   saying 
these   plays    are  unintelligible.     Like   wise  folk,   they  pretend  to 
have  read  them,  and  say  nothing.     In  Browning's  case  they  are 
spared   the    hypocrisy.     No    one    need    pretend    to  have    read  *A 
Soul's  Tragedy^;  and  it  seems,  therefore,  inexcusable  for  any  one 
to  assert  that  one  of  the  plainest,  most  pointed  and  piquant  bits 
of    writing  in    the    language  is  unintelligible.      But    surely    some- 
thing more  may  be  truthfully  said  of  these  plays  than  that  they 
are  comprehensible.     First  of  all,  they  are  plays,  and  not  works 
—  like  the  dropsical  dramas  of  Sir  Henry  Taylor  and  Mr.   Swin- 
burne.    Some  of  them  have  stood  the  ordeal  of  actual  represent- 
ation; and  though  it  would  be  absurd  to  pretend    that    they  met 
with  that  overwhelming  measure  of  success  our  critical   age  has 
reserved  for  such  dramatists  as  the  late  Lord  Lytton,  the  author 
of  ^  Money,  ^  the  late  Tom  Taylor,   the   author  of   ^The  Overland 
Route,*   the   late   Mr.   Robertson,   the   author  of    < Caste,*   Mr.    H. 
Byron,    the    author    of    ^  Our    Boys,*    Mr.    Wills,    the    author    of 
<  Charles  L,*  Mr.  Burnand,  the  author  of  <  The  Colonel,*  and  Mr. 
Gilbert,   the  author  of  so  much  that  is  great  and  glorious  in   our 
national    drama;    at    all    events    they    proved    themselves    able    to 
arrest  and  retain  the  attention  of  very  ordinary  audiences.     But 
who  can  deny  dignity  and  even  grandeur  to  ^Luria,*  or  withhold 
the  meed  of  a   melodious   tear   from  *  Mildred  Tresham  *  ?     What 
action  of  what  play  is  more  happily  conceived  or  better  rendered 
than  that  of  *  Pippa  Passes  *  ?  —  where  innocence  and  its  reverse, 
tender   love    and   violent   passion,  are    presented   with    emphasis, 
and  yet  blended  into  a  dramatic   unity   and  a  poetic  perfection, 
entitling     the     author    to    the    very     first    place    amongst    those 
dramatists  of  the  century  who  have  labored  under  the  enormous 
disadvantage  of  being  poets  to  start  with. 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELtr 


1923 


Passing-  from  the  plays,  we  are  next  attracted  by  a  number 
of  splendid  poems,  on  whose  base  the  structure  of  Mr.  Brown- 
ing's fame  perhaps  rests  most  surely,  —  his  dramatic  pieces; 
poems  which  give  utterance  to  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of 
persons  other  than  himself,  or  as  he  puts  it  when  dedicating  a 
number  of  them  to  his  wife:  — 

<^Love,  you  saw  me  gather  men  and  women. 
Live  or  dead,   or  fashioned  by  my  fancy, 
Enter  each  and  all,  and  use  their  service, 
Speak  from  every  mouth  the  speech — a  poem;'^ 

or  again  m  ^Sordello^: — • 

"  By  making  speak,  myself  kept  out  of  view. 
The  very  man  as  he  was  wont  to  do.'^ 

At  a  rough  calculation,  there  must  be  at  least  sixty  of  these 
pieces.  Let  me  run  over  the  names  of  a  very  few  of  them. 
*Saul,^  a  poem  beloved  by  all  true  women;  *  Caliban,^  which  the 
men,  not  unnaturally  perhaps,  often  prefer.  The  ^  Two  Bishops  ^ : 
the  sixteenth-century  one  ordering  his  tomb  of  jasper  and  basalt 
in  St.  Praxed's  Church,  and  his  nineteenth-century  successor  roll- 
ing out  his  post-prandial  Apologia.  ^  My  Last  Duchess,^  the 
'  Soliloquy  in  a  Spanish  Cloister,  ^  ^  Andrea  del  Sarto,  *  ^  Fra  Lippo 
Lippi,^  <  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra,*  'Cleon,*  ^A  Death  in  the  Desert,* 
*  The  Italian  in  England,  *  and  ^  The  Englishman  in  Italy.  * 

It  is  plain  truth  to  say  that  no  other  English  poet,  living  or 
dead,  Shakespeare  excepted,  has  so  heaped  up  human  interest  for 
his  readers  as  has  Robert  Browning. 

Against  these  dramatic  pieces  the  charge  of  unintelligibility 
fails  as  completely  as  it  does  against  the  plays.  They  are  all 
perfectly  intelligible;  but  —  and  here  is  the  rub  —  they  are  not 
easy  reading,  like  the  estimable  writings  of  the  late  Mrs.  Hemans. 
They  require  the  same  honest  attention  as  it  is  the  fashion  to 
g^ve  to  a  lecture  of  Professor  Huxley's  or  a  sermon  of  Canon 
Liddon's;  and  this  is  just  what  too  many  persons  will  not  give 
to  poetry.     They 

*  Love  to  hear 
A  soft  pulsation  in  their  easy  ear; 
To  turn  the  page,  and  let  their  senses  drink 
A  lay  that  shall  not  trouble  them  to  think.* 


1924 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL 


Next  to  these  dramatic  pieces  come  what  we  may  be  content 
to  call  simply  poems:  some  lyrical,  some  narrative.  The  latter 
are  straightforward  enough,  and  as  a  rule  full  of  spirit  and  hu- 
mor; but  this  is  more  than  can  always  be  said  of  the  lyrical 
pieces.  Now,  for  the  first  time  in  dealing  with  this  first  period, 
excluding  <Sordello,^  we  strike  difficulty.  The  Chinese  puzzle 
comes  in.  We  wonder  whether  it  all  turns  on  the  punctuation. 
And  the  awkward  thing  for  Mr.  Browning's  reputation  is  this, 
that  these  bewildering  poems  are  for  the  most  part  very  short. 
We  say  awkward,  for  it  is  not  more  certain  that  Sarah  Gamp 
liked  her  beer  drawn  mild  than  it  is  that  your  Englishman  likes 
his  poetry  cut  short;  and  so,  accordingly,  it  often  happens  that 
some  estimable  paterfamilias  takes  up  an  odd  volume  of  Brown- 
ing his  volatile  son  or  moonstruck  daughter  has  left  lying  about, 
pishes  and  pshaws!  and  then,  with  an  air  of  much  condescension 
and  amazing  candor,  remarks  that  he  will  give  the  fellow  another 
chance,  and  not  condemn  him  imread.  So  saying,  he  opens  the 
book,  and  carefully  selects  the  very  shortest  poem  he  can  find; 
and  in  a  moment,  without  sign  or  signal,  note  or  warning,  the 
unhappy  man  is  floundering  up  to  his  neck  in  lines  like  these, 
which  are  the  third  and  final  stanza  of  a  poem  called  *  Another 
Way  of  Love  * :  — 

<<And  after,  for  pastime, 
If  June  be  refulgent 
With  flowers  in  completeness, 
All  petals,   no  prickles, 
Delicious  as  trickles 
Of  wine  poured  at  mass-time, 

And  choose  One  indulgent 
To  redness  and  sweetness; 
Or  if  with  experience  of  man  and  of  spider. 
She  use  my  June  lightning,  the  strong  insect-ridder 
To  stop  the  fresh  spinning, —  why  June  will  consider.* 

He  comes  up  gasping,  and  more  than  ever  persuaded  that 
Browning's  poetry  is  a  mass  of  inconglomerate  nonsense,  which 
nobody  imderstands  —  least  of  all  members  of  the  Browning 
Society 

We  need  be  at  no  pains  to  find  a  meaning  for  everything 
Mr.  Browning  has  written.  But  when  all  is  said  and  done  — 
when  these  few  freaks  of  a  crowded  brain  are  thrown  overboard 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL 


1925 


to  the  sharks  of  verbal  criticism  who  feed  on  such  things — Mr. 
Browning  and  his  great  poetical  achievement  remain  behind  to 
be  dealt  with  and  accounted  for.  We  do  not  get  rid  of  the  Lau- 
reate by  quoting:  — 

"  O  darling  room,  my  heart's  delight, 
Dear  room,   the  apple  of  my  sight, 
With  thy  two  couches  soft  and  white 
There  is  no  room  so  exquisite  — 
No  little  room  so  warm  and  bright 
"Wherein  to  read,  wherein  to  write;** 

or  of  Wordsworth  by  quoting :  — 

<<At  this,  my  boy  hung  down  his  head: 
He  blushed  with  shame,  nor  made  reply, 
And  five  times  to  the  child  I  said, 
«<Why,  Edward?  tell  me  why?>» 

or  of  Keats  by  remembering  that  he  once  addressed  a  young 
lady  as  follows: — • 

<*  O  come,  Georgiana !  the  rose  is  full  blpwn. 
The  riches  of  Flora  are  lavishly  strown: 
The  air  is  all  softness  and  crystal  the  streams, 
The  west  is  resplendently  clothed  in  beams.** 

The  strength  of  a  rope  may  be  but  the  strength  of  its  weak- 
est part;  but  poet^  are  to  be  judged  in  their  happiest  hours,  and 
in  their  greatest  works. 

The  second  period  of  Mr.  Browning's  poetry  demands  a  dif- 
ferent line  of  argument;  for  it  is,  in  my  judgment,  folly  to  deny 
that  he  has  of  late  years  written  a  great  deal  which  makes  very 
difficult  reading  indeed.  No  doubt  you  may  meet  people  who 
tell  you  that  they  read  ^The  Ring  and  the  Book*  for  the  first 
time  without  much  mental  effort;  but  you  will  do  well  not  to 
believe  them.  These  poems  are  difficult  —  they  cannot  help  being 
so.  What  is  ^  The  Ring  and  the  Book  *  ?  A  huge  novel  in  twenty 
thousand  lines  —  told  after  the  method  not  of  Scott  but  of  Balzac; 
it  tears  the  hearts  out  of  a  dozen  characters;  it  tells  the  same 
story  from  ten  different  points  of  view.  It  is  loaded  with  detail 
of  every  kind  and  description:  you  are  let  off  nothing.  As  with 
a  schoolboy's  life  at  a  large  school,  if  he  is  to  enjoy  it  at  all,  he 
must  fling  himself  into  it,  and  care  intensely  about  everything — 


1926 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL 


SO  the  reader  of  ^  The  Ring  and  the  Book  *  must  be  interested 
in  everybody  and  everything,  down  to  the  fact  that  the  eldest 
daughter  of  the  counsel  for  the  prosecution  of  Guido  is  eight 
years  old  on  the  very  day  he  is  writing  his  speech,  and  that  he 
is  going  to  have  fried  liver  and  parsley  for  his-  supper. 

If  you  are  prepared  for  this,  you  will  have  your  reward;  for 
the  style^  though  rugged  and  involved,  is  throughout,  with  the 
exception  of  the  speeches  of  counsel,  eloquent  and  at  times 
superb;  and  as  for  the  matter,  if  your  interest  in  human  nature 
is  keen,  curious,  almost  professional  —  if  nothing  man,  woman,  or 
child  has  been,  done,  or  suffered,  or  conceivably  can  be,  do,  or 
suffer,  is  without  interest  for  you;  if  you  are  fond  of  analysis, 
and  do  not  shrink  from  dissection  —  you  will  prize  ^The  Ring 
and  the  Book*  as  the  surgeon  prizes  the  last  great  contribution 
to  comparative  anatomy  or  pathology. 

But  this  sort  of  work  tells  upon  style.  Browning  has,  I  think, 
fared  better  than  some  writers.  To  me,  at  all  events,  the  step 
from  ^  A  Biot  in  the  'Scutcheon  *  to  ^  The  Ring  and  the  Book  * 
is  not  so  marked  as  is  the  inauvais  pas  that  lies  between  ^  Amos 
Barton  *  and  *  Daniel  Deronda.  *  But  difficulty  is  not  obscurity. 
One  task  is  more  difficult  than  another.  The  angles  at  the  base 
of  the  isosceles  triangles  are  apt  to  get  mixed,  and  to  confuse  us 
all  —  man  and  woman  alike.  ^Prince  Hohenstiel*  something  or 
another  is  a  very  difficult  poem,  not  only  to  pronounce  but  to 
read;  but  if  a  poet  chooses  as  his  subject  Napoleon  III. — in 
whom  the  cad,  the  coward,  the  idealist,  and  the  sensualist  were 
inextricably  mixed  —  and  purports  to  make  him  unbosom  himself 
over  a  bottle  of  Gladstone  claret  in  a  tavern  at  Leicester  Square, 
you  cannot  expect  that  the  product  should  belong  to  the  same 
class  of  poetry  as  Mr.  Coventry  Patmore's  admirable  ^  Angel  in 
the  House.* 

It  is  the  method  that  is  difficult.  Take  the  husband  in  ^The 
Ring  and  the  Book.*  Mr.  Browning  remorselessly  hunts  him 
down,  tracks  him  to  the  last  recesses  of  his  mind,  and  there  bids 
him  stand  and  deliver!  He  describes  love,  not  only  broken  but 
breaking;  hate  in  its  germ;  doubt  at  its  birth.  These  are  diffi- 
cult things  to  do  either  in  poetry  or  prose,  and  people  with  easy, 
flowing  Addisonian  or  Tennysonian  styles  cannot  do  them. 

I  seem  to  overhear  a  still,  small  voice  asking.  But  are  they 
worth  doing  ?  or  at  all  events,  is  it  the  province  of  art  to  do 
them  ?      The    question   ought   not   to   be   asked.       It   is   heretical, 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL  JQ27 

being  contrary  to  the  whole  direction  of  the  latter  half  of  this 
century.  The  chains  binding  us  to  the  rocks  of  realism  are 
faster  riveted  every  day;  and  the  Perseus  who  is  destined  to  cut 
them  is,  I  expect,  some  mischievous  little  boy  at  a  Board-school. 
But  as  the  question  has  been  asked,  I  will  own  that  sometimes, 
even  when  deepest  in  works  of  this,  the  now  orthodox  school,  I 
have  been  harassed  by  distressing  doubts  whether  after  all  this 
enormous  labor  is  net  in  vain;  and  wearied  by  the  effort,  over- 
loaded by  the  detail,  bewildered  by  the  argument,  and  sickened 
by  the  pitiless  dissection  of  character  and  motive,  have  been 
tempted  to  cry  aloud,  quoting  —  or  rather,  in  the  agony  of  the 
moment,  misquoting  —  Coleridge :  — 

<<  Simplicity  —  thou  better  name 
Than  all  the  family  of  Fame.'* 

But  this  ebullition  of  feeling  is  childish  and  even  sinful.  We 
must  take  our  poets  as  we  do  our  meals — as  they  are  served  up 
to  us.  Indeed,  you  may,  if  full  of  courage,  give  a  cook  notice, 
but  not  the  time-spirit  who  makes  our  poets.  We  may  be  sure  — 
to  appropriate  an  idea  of  the  late  Sir  James  Stephen  —  that  if 
Robert  Browning  had  lived  in  the  sixteenth  century,  he  would 
not  have  written  a  poem  like  *■  The  Ring  and  the  Book  * ;  and  if 
Edmund  Spenser  had  lived  in  the  nineteenth  century  he  would 
not  have  written  a  poem  like  the  ^Faerie  Queene.' 

It  is  therefore  idle  to  arraign  Mr.  Browning's  later  method 
and  style  for  possessing  difficulties  and  intricacies  which  are 
inherent  to  it.  The  method  at  all  events  has  an  interest  of  its 
own,  a  strength  of  its  own,  a  grandeur  of  its  own.  If  you  do 
not  like  it  you  must  leave  it  alone.  You  are  fond,  you  say,  of 
romantic  poetry;  well,  then,  take  down  your  Spenser  and  qualify 
yourself  to  join  *^the  small  transfigured  band''  of  those  who  are 
able  to  take  their  Bible-oaths  they  have  read  their  ^Faerie 
Queene'  all  through.  The  company,  though  small,  is  delightful, 
and  you  will  have  plenty  to  talk  about  without  abusing  Brown- 
ing, who  probably  knows  his.  Spenser  better  than  you  do.  Real- 
ism will  not  for  ever  dominate  the  world  of  letters  and  art  — 
the  fashion  of  all  things  passe th  away  —  but  it  has  already 
earned  a  great  place:  it  has  written  books,  composed  poems, 
painted  pictures,  all  stamped  with  that  <^  greatness  "  which,  despite 
fluctuations,  nay,  even  reversals  of  taste  and  opinion,  means 
immortality. 


1928 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL 


But  against  Mr.  Browning's  later  poems  it  is  sometimes 
alleged  that  their  meaning  is  obscure  because  their  grammar  is 
bad.  A  cynic  was  once  heard  to  observe  with  reference  to  that 
noble  poem  *The  Grammarian's  Funeral,^  that  it  was  a  pity  the 
talented  author  had  ever  since  allowed  himself  to  remain  under 
the  delusion  that  he  had  not  only  buried  the  grammarian,  but 
his  grammar  also.  It  is  doubtless  true  that  Mr.  Browning  has 
some  provoking  ways,  and  is  something  too  much  of  a  verbal 
acrobat.  Also,  as  his  witty  parodist,  the  pet  poet  of  six  genera- 
tions of  Cambridge  undergraduates,  reminds  us:  — 

<*  He  loves  to  dock  the  smaller  parts  of  speech, 
As  we  curtail  the  already  cur-tailed  cur.  >* 

It  is  perhaps  permissible  to  weary  a  little  of  his  t's  and  ^'s,  but 
we  believe  we  cannot  be  corrected  when  we  say  that  Browning 
is  a  poet  whose  grammar  will  bear  scholastic  investigation  bettei 
than  that  of  most  of  Apollo's  children. 

A  word  about  ^Sordello.  ^  One  half  of  ^Sordello,*  and  that, 
with  Mr.  Browning's  usual  ill-luck,  the  first  half,  is  undoubtedly 
obscure.  It  is  as  diiiicult  to  read  as  *■  Endymion  *  or  the  ^  Revolt 
of  Islam,*  and  for  the  same  reason  —  the  author's  lack  of  experi- 
ence in  the  art  of  composition.  We  have  all  heard  of  the  young 
architect  who  forgot  to  put  a  staircase  in  his  house,  which  con- 
tained fine  rooms,  but  no  way  of  getting  into  them.  *■  Sordello  * 
is  a  poem  without  a  staircase.  The  author,  still  in  his  twenties, 
essayed  a  high  thing.      For  his  subject  — 

**  *  He  singled  out 
Sordello  compassed  murkily  about 
With  ravage  of  six  long  sad  hundred  years.  *>* 

He  partially  failed;  and  the  British  public,  with  its  accustomed 
generosity,  and  in  order,  I  suppose,  to  encourage  the  others,  has 
never  ceased  girding  at  him  because  forty-two  years  ago  he  pub- 
lished at  his  own  charges  a  little  book  of  two  hundred  and  fifty 
pages,  which  even  such  of  them  as  were  then  able  to  read  could 
not  understand. 


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